Chapter 38

  Jimothy Whyte

  Jimothy opened the door for Lady Hearts so that she could walk through onto the top of his lighthouse. Lady Hearts did not close it behind her, which bothered Jimothy—open doors always bothered Jimothy—but he didn’t say anything. Lady Hearts made him nervous. All the Ladies did, but Hearts especially. There was something about her gauzy wings, looking dipped in blood, that awakened a creeping dread inside him.

  Hospitals. It was something about hospitals. Where people died. Where other people tried to stop that from happening, and where maybe they could, for a while. Jimothy didn’t like hospitals. They were hopeless. They were the end.

  But he didn’t want to think about all that. Death, dying, having a brain tumor. He just wanted to paint and be with his friends. Hazel appeared at his side and pushed his head up under Jimothy’s free hand, soft and warm.

  “Fear not, Hero of Lights,” rasped Lady Hearts. She stood by the open door like a bloodstained ghost against the blank canvas of Hyperion’s sky. Skywater’s sky was a blue rectangle within the doorframe beside her. “The Lifegiver has seen your plight.”

  “Yeah,” said Jimothy. Fiora had explained to him how the angels copy their bodies for the Narrative. How his old body must have had a brain tumor that got copied over. How she couldn’t do anything to help his other body, unless she met it in person somehow, but she had an idea for this one.

  He asked Lady Hearts, “Can you tell me what her plan is?”

  Lady Hearts shivered; her gauzy white exterior shook for a moment. Jimothy had no idea what this meant. Maybe it was just like a bird shaking out its wings. He had heard that the Ladies were a lot like birds. Or at least, more like birds than like anything else.

  “She says it will require light. You must become Champion.”

  “I have a lot of light now.” Jim looked down through the stained-glass floor to the flaring brightness of the lighthouse. It still wasn’t enough, but he’d collected a lot of crystals.

  “We will require much more,” said Lady Hearts. “Ah. He comes.” The hood obscuring her face lifted as she looked up at the skies. Jimothy followed her gaze and saw something shiny and grey sliding down through the blank page overhead. It was a vessel shaped like a stretched bullet, with fins and wings that swiveled as it descended in a smooth arc from the empty sky to the top of the lighthouse. Jimothy didn’t know anything about spaceships, but he liked the design of this one. It was simple and elegant. Probably expensive.

  The sleek vessel came to an easy halt at the level of Jimothy’s platform. A section of the hull that had appeared solid slid apart in several pieces and a dark ramp descended until it clinked on the stained glass of the platform.

  Several figures emerged from the dim interior. One was a man in a fancy white-and-pink pinstripe suit, except ‘man’ might be inaccurate because he had a big orange crab instead of a head. Jimothy recognized him, but couldn’t remember his name. One was a tall, slender woman with a huge mane of startling crimson hair and equally startling attire, or lack thereof. She wore a brown leather jacket only a shade darker than her caramel skin, which hung open and did a poor job of hiding the fact that she wasn’t wearing anything else on her torso. Her eyes were bronze and her sharp teeth were the color of lead. She smiled at Jimothy and winked as she strode across his platform, bootheels clicking on the glass, and she descended without a word down the stairs into his lighthouse. Jimothy became keenly aware of his heartbeat, which all at once seemed unusually loud and fast.

  Leocanto Lockbreaker appeared like a murky man-shaped smudge in the air. Jimothy looked for the Lockbreaker’s accompanying shadows, but didn’t see any. Because, he realized after a moment, there were no shadows on Hyperion. No light source, except for the light of the lighthouse, and right now that was below their feet.

  “Mr. Whyte,” said the Lockbreaker to Jimothy. “Lady Hearts.” He held up a wooden box trimmed with gold. “I’ve got them.” His voice made Jimothy shiver. It was a voice that made every other voice in the world seem like staticky radio voices by comparison. Warm and rich and deep, like a mug of the best hot chocolate. You could huddle up next to it on a cold winter’s night.

  That’s what Jimothy was thinking when something struck him on the back of the head.

  Ferrigo caught the unconscious hero and eased him down to the emerald glass. He kept a ready posture, for the angelic canine nearby was displeased by this turn of events. The dog growled, hackles up. Ferrigo was one false move from having to duel an angel. But Ferrigo, calm as ever, simply stood and retreated from the hero, allowing the dog to step protectively over his fallen master.

  “Lockbreaker,” rasped Lady Hearts. “What is the meaning of this?” There was an edge of warning in her voice, the more menacing for being so rare.

  “It is quite simple,” said the Lockbreaker, “and no matter of betrayal, I assure you. I am, strange though it may seem to some, acting wholly in the interest of that young man.”

  Lady Hearts waited.

  “I have the light.” The Lockbreaker drew her attention back to the gold-bound box by raising it to chest level.

  He unclasped the latches and swung open the lid. He made very sure to open it away from himself. Light blazed forth from within the box, illuminating Lady Hearts like a hundred searchlights. She did not flinch back; and somehow, frustrating the Lockbreaker’s secret hopes, even this light could not penetrate the depths of her cowl to reveal what features truly lay within. He saw only the glint of reflection on two beady eyes in the dark.

  His shadow, suddenly in existence behind him, made a show of straightening its hat and brushing off the shoulders of its coat.

  He snapped the box shut. Lady Hearts was silent for a long moment. “How many?” she asked at last.

  “Seven,” he replied. Seven pearl-sized suns at rest in the box.

  Lady Hearts and the Lockbreaker stared at each other for a long while. A faint wind blew. The angel named Hazel appeared to sense the tension, for it stopped growling and crouched lower over the body of its master. The Lockbreaker’s shadow, long and gangly and fading fast, slunk toward the edge of the platform and slipped down onto the outer wall.

  “The Bleeding God is displeased,” said Lady Hearts at last. “Did you kill them, Lockbreaker?”

  “Personally.” He said it as a point of pride. “All seven.” He would never delegate something of this importance, not even to Ferrigo or Samantha. Besides, they didn’t have the Voice. “You may be pleased to note that it was swift and painless, in all cases but one.”

  Lady Hearts took a small step forward. The Lockbreaker raised his free hand in a placating gesture. “Now, now,” he said. “They were people I had intended to kill anyway.” Except for that one, but the Lady didn’t need to know that.

  Lady Hearts rustled her wings. The blood at the edges crept further up as though soaking through the fabric. The Lockbreaker wondered what would happen should the entirety of the wings be bloodied. An unsettling thought—nearly as unsettling as the question of what sort of atrocity might precipitate such an event. “The Bleeding God,” she repeated, “is terribly upset.” Then, after a pause. “I am reasoning with her.”

  Ah, good. For a moment, the Lockbreaker had worried that he’d misjudged the Lady. But in the end she proved practical, as the Ladies all did. Lady Hearts would never kill anyone herself, but she would let ten die to save a hundred. Come to that, she would do the same to ninety-nine. The Ladies of Skywater tended to think mathematically like that, in counterbalance against the Lords.

  Samantha returned from below bearing a small blue pasteboard box with some reverence, cupping it in both hands. “On his bedstand,” she said.

  The Lockbreaker took the box tenderly. He cracked the lid and chanced a look within, though such light was dangerous to him.

  Niri’s light—her soul, perhaps—was as bright as the others. Perhaps, unless his immaterial vision played tricks on him, a bit more luminous still. They were all ever so slightly different. Niri’s light moved rapidly, spinning in swift oscillations.

  He snapped the box shut. He considered adding it to the rest, but it didn’t seem right. Niri did not belong in a box with souls of the Lockbreaker’s common victims. She would be added separately when the time came. He returned the box to Samantha, who had always been fond of the girl. Niri had admired Samantha, which had been equal parts reasonable and troubling. But neither fondness nor admiration had bearing any longer upon Niriandra Al’Sarissa.

  “We must do it while he sleeps,” said the Lockbreaker to Lady Hearts, possibly interrupting her inner conversation with her god. “Lest he object.” And object he would, no doubt. He had not used Niri’s light, had not even added it to the brilliance of his lighthouse, and that was proof enough.

  “The Bleeding God agrees, with reluctance, that what is done is done,” Lady Hearts declared. “We must proceed, for the sake of the Hero of Lights.” Lady Hearts hesitated, then added, “She warns you, however, against further actions of this sort. Else I shall personally become an instrument of her righteous anger.” Lady Hearts did not seem thrilled about the prospect. No matter.

  At that moment, with an uncanny inconvenience of timing which did not surprise the Lockbreaker in the least, an alert sounded within his ship, still docked alongside the lighthouse. The alert was not audible outside, but the Lockbreaker had left a shadow in the cabin, where it happily cheated at cards with the other trusted and capable operatives of Xeon that he had brought along.

  It was a proximity alert. Another vessel descended rapidly upon them, much larger than the Lockbreaker’s unnamed private craft, and much less friendly. His scanners identified it readily enough, and the news was unfortunate.

  “Samantha,” he said. She shivered as a frisson of pleasure coursed through her. She enjoyed hearing him say her name. She enjoyed it rather too much, but you had to accept those sorts of idiosyncrasies when dealing with a siren. “Through the door.”

  She shared Ferrigo’s most appealing characteristic, which was that he had to explain himself very little, if at all. Samantha dashed through the open door to Skywater, directly past Lady Hearts, in a long-legged run that reminded the Lockbreaker vaguely, though he would never say it to her, of an ostrich.

  The enemy ship became visible above, too swift and too close already for the Lockbreaker to dare attempt an escape on his own craft. He considered taking the hero and following Samantha through the door. But no; it had to be done here, and soon. And besides, Ferrigo was present. A reunion between him and the great Captain Bellafide was worth the price of admission, even if that price was some ambivalence regarding the continued survival of Jimothy Whyte.

  Bellafide’s ship, the We’re Here!, appeared to be a seafaring vessel—a galleon complete with sails, cannons, rigging. Her eccentric appearance nevertheless struck fear into the hearts of those who saw her, for the blue sails and the clawed flag proclaimed the presence of the most feared buccaneer in the Narrative.

  The Lockbreaker had no need to order his men to stand ready. One could hardly do otherwise with Captain Bellafide bearing down.

  The We’re Here! swung down clumsily in Hyperion’s atmosphere until it eased to a halt bestride the summit of the lighthouse, opposite Leocanto’s vessel. It was a whale to the Lockbreaker’s shark, and like a whale its belly was encrusted with various barnacles and shellfish, for it made berth in that region of space south of Ardia where the aquatic touched the astronomical.

  Captain Bellafide, set proudly astride the railing of the main deck, looked down upon them with evident delight. She was a crustacean like Ferrigo, but while he was a crab, she was a crayfish, and while Ferrigo’s animalistic features were restricted to the head, Captain Bellafide’s entire body was clawed and carapaced. She was snow white in color, her beady eyes set above complex chewing mandibles and long, twitching, whiskery protrusions. Her two primary arms ended in thin claws, while another half dozen clawed appendages, smaller and more precise, fussed and fidgeted, adjusting her jacket and cravat, picking off tiny bits of debris, checking the array of rapiers in their scabbards. She stood tall on four armored legs, modestly clothed in a navy fabric to match the coat she wore, and the gleaming pearlescent shell of her tail extended behind her.

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  Some, according to Ferrigo, might consider her quite attractive.

  Captain Bellafide plucked the feathered tricorn hat from atop her head with a slender white cheliped. “Well, shiver me timbers!” she cried. “Have I gone star-blind? Ahoy, Francis! What do ye in the company of that shadow of a man?” Her voice was a rich, high croak, like a chorus of frogs speaking as one.

  Francis—that is, Ferrigo—made to reply, and surely the two would have bantered amusingly for a while before getting around to the unpleasant business of killing each other, but at that moment several other figures appeared beside Bellafide at the rail of the We’re Here!. Ferrigo’s quick-witted reply died before more than a word of it was spoken.

  First was Lady Shadows, rising like an inky thunderhead against the parchment sky of Hyperion. Beside her an even worse omen emerged: the brooding hulk of Lord Foe. And there behind, cartwheeling up into the rafters like some huge four-legged clown of a sea-wight, Lord Fool. Damn him.

  The situation had turned, in a moment, from amusing to grave.

  “Oho!” laughed Captain Bellafide, “No clever words for me, Francis? Been tamed by landlubber’s work? Or per’aps you’ve noticed me new friends. A right jolly lot we are! Set us up nice and pretty, did that ole Changing God. Not too late, me boy! Come—hop on up here afore we blast the hero and his lighthouse to smithereens. Be just like old times, eh?”

  The Lockbreaker could tell, even without any noticeable gesture on Ferrigo’s part, that Ferrigo understood the situation perfectly well. Bellafide appeared to be in charge of this attack; thus it was in Ferrigo’s power to play for time while Samantha brought help through from Skywater.

  Ferrigo adjusted his white gloves. “I think not,” he said, his voice crisp and clean. “The buccaneer’s life never suited me, I’m afraid.”

  Bellafide’s long milky whiskers drooped in disappointment. She shook her head sadly as she replaced her hat. “From feared name to pencil-pushing lackey. You’d truly stick with that shadow of a man and his little ‘organization’ instead of scourge the stars with me?”

  “Every day of the week,” replied Ferrigo, “and twice on Sundays.” If he’d had a normal face, he would have been smiling.

  Lady Shadows stepped forth before Captain Bellafide could reply. “And what of you, Lockbreaker?” she asked. “Why stand with the hero? To do so now is to throw away your life. Come. Greater things await.”

  The command of Lady Shadows was such that his conviction wavered. The Lockbreaker asked himself, why was he doing this? What was the real reason, the one behind all the posturing? In truth, he did not know. He owed this hero nothing. In fact, this hero had gotten Niri killed, and his subsequent presence had brought a wrathful Lady Chains upon Xeon’s dockside headquarters. Too late for the Lockbreaker to claim he pretended to aid the hero simply to avoid repercussions from Lord and Lady, for here were both, dark and deadly, staring him down.

  He did not know why he aided the hero. But then, did it matter why? He would do as he pleased, and that was the beginning, the middle, and the end of it. He would sing for none of them, deploy his Voice for none that demanded it of him. Good Ferrigo had said it best, and Leocanto Lockbreaker repeated his words.

  “I think not.”

  At that moment, something large and jolly and terrible moved on the other side of the open door to Skywater. It blocked the blue rectangle of sky, and a second later Lord Friend had squeezed through the door. Samantha darted in after him.

  Lord Friend observes the situation with a trenchant eye, as the smoke of his pipe twines up to stain the parchment sky of Hyperion. He frowns in disapproval, for he has seen much wrong in this world, but Lord and Lady scheming to murder a hero is a malefaction the likes of which shak—

  The We’re Here!’s cannons fired, and mighty weapons they were. They left the door to Skywater a blasted wreck devoid of magic; they shattered the stained-glass floor of the platform; they shook the foundations of the lighthouse.

  Lord Friend had shielded the unconscious hero; he appeared to have caught a raging ball of bluish energy in one hand just before it could obliterate the Hero of Light.

  Thus was the battle joined. Everyone knew exactly what to do, who to fight, as though they were all following the same script.

  Lord Friend returned the ball of energy to the hull of the We’re Here! and rose to battle Lord Foe in the air. Their clash was monumental, with such a sound and a turbulence that the air shook and the fabric of reality trembled. For Lord Foe was mighty with strength and stone, but the threefold pipe of Lord Friend was no less a weapon, weaving its smoke into illusion and reality and obscuring the difference. Lord Fool, meanwhile, extracted a large microphone from his hat and crawled about in the air overhead, broadcasting a running commentary of the battle to everyone in the area.

  —and Foe goes for the uppercut—but it’s a miss! A miss, ladies and gentleman, and now Friend closes the gap, he swings in with his pipe (fine craftsmanship, by the way, I know that guy, he did my hat), and it’s a roundabout, but his boxing days are behind him, and it’s waaaay too slow, and Lo—BUT WAIT! That was a trick, sorry folks, now the real Friend is—ooh, Foe’s gonna feel that in the morning!

  Ferrigo nimbly scaled the short distance to the deck of the We’re Here!, knives in hand, and hopped onto the railing beside Captain Bellafide. She was ready; her claws snapped and all six of her short rapiers sliced the air in unison. The two began as though resuming a dance they had left off only moments before. Ferrigo was quicker, and his skill with knives was commonly believed supernatural. He tossed several high into the air, confident of catching them later at just the right moment. But Bellafide had an advantage in size, strength, and defense. Her carapace was tough, and her array of rapiers wielded like huge needles by her smaller arms discouraged the close-and-personal type of fighting necessary to really make use of knives. Bellafide danced about surefooted on four legs even as her ship rocked in the backlash of the Lords’ duel.

  —an exchange! Foe and Friend are of course in the same size category (that is, the extra-super-heavyweight), and it shows! Ah, Lord Foe connects with a kick! Is that legal? Who cares! It’s a sockdolager and no mistake! Oh, that one did it for the lighthouse; hope there wasn’t anything important in there!

  Xeon’s best and brightest knew what to do. Samantha was the first to board the We’re Here!, but the rest followed close behind. They clashed with Bellafide’s fishy pirates, leaving none with a chance to go for the hero. If the Lockbreaker knew how Bellafide operated, which thanks to Ferrigo he did very well, then a life of riches and luxury awaited whichever of her crew could slay the hero in a situation like this.

  Bellafide’s crew had no little skill; her former first mate was proof enough of that. But he was the Lockbreaker’s first mate now, and it was a similar story with every one of the Xeon operatives that scrambled to stem the tide of pirates. Samantha, exploiting her natural advantage against most male foes, wreathed herself in a flurry of spiked chain, red with flame, that lashed calamitously into the ranks of pirates. Keppeth was there in a moment, raw strength as his sword and his shield. Jonah, a miniature blizzard of colored paper, streamed rapidly among the outliers and ranged attackers in the rigging, his potent psionics rendering any loose object a potentially deadly weapon. Vannis was there, guns blazing, and Yellow John with his trumpet, and Legitimate Jake’s latest assault robot. Fira pulled the Lockbreaker’s ship away from the crumbling tower and swung it around to lay fire on the We’re Here!.

  —really getting interesting now, ladies and gents and otherwise, it’s all gone catawumpus! Tactics are being discarded; we’re in for a slugfest! That’s right, a good old-fashioned slobberknocker of a brawl up here, and my, what a beautiful day for it, forecast is a slightly inky sky with a high chance of doom and despair, seriously folks, get your popcorn, grab your ravioli, and strap yourself in for some bathos, because—

  Leocanto Lockbreaker and the angel faced Lady Shadows while Lady Hearts scooped the hero up off the glassy shards and the tower began to slide into a slow collapse. Hearts dove down through the tower as it fell, using its fall as cover. Lady Shadows tried to follow, but the Lockbreaker would not allow it. He blocked her path.

  “I made you what you are,” she hissed.

  “For all the good it did you,” replied the Lockbreaker. For all her curse and her power, he had never sung for her. The Voice was his.

  “You are but a shadow. I shall unmake you.”

  “Look around,” said the Lockbreaker as the floor collapsed under him. He remained in place even while the dark stone tumbled away. “There are no shadows here.”

  She rushed at him.

  He opened the box at her.

  Lady Shadows screeched, a sound so loud and piercing it might have deafened him did he have physical ears. It didn’t seem to kill her, though, as he had hoped it might.

  Unfortunate.

  Her shadowed wings, curved into vicious claws, slashed through the place where he stood, tearing painfully at his incorporeal being. He snapped the box shut and clutched it as he cried out. He had to keep the box safe. He suspected that Lady Shadows knew exactly what he and Hearts had been trying to do with the light. It was, in a way, the opposite of what Lady Shadows had done to the Lockbreaker.

  Dog , he said, using the Voice. Fetch.

  In the moment of stillness that followed, when thugs and pirates and cannons and even the Lords paused at the sound of the Voice, the Lockbreaker flung the box, latched securely, away into the sky. He had put into those two short words all the meaning he could muster, such that even the angel must understand the critical importance of the box’s contents.

  The angel vanished in a blink of light.

  Lady Shadows screeched again, not in pain this time. She rushed at the Lockbreaker, shadows spread in a vast layered array of wings and hooks, scythes and claws. The Lockbreaker dropped down through the wreckage, dodged still-falling chunks of dark masonry, passed a paint-splattered rain of paper and canvas, chased down after the fallen beacon of the lighthouse like a void shark after a falling star.

  There at the ground, near a standing stone that at a glance reminded him of Niri, he and Lady Hearts faced Lady Shadows, while overhead Lord clashed against Lord, and ship against ship, and former compatriots to the death, and crew against crew.

  Lady Shadows had always been the one he could never hope to face, for she had been right about that: he was only a shadow, or a great layered multitude of them, and that was her domain. He was untouchable to most; but to her he posed no more threat than a paper mannequin. And he had been correct, unfortunately, about Lady Hearts: whatever powers she might command, they were soft and subtle, and availed not against the vicious brutality of the last of the Ladies.

  He saw Lady Hearts cut down in moments, before her wings were even fully blood-soaked. And then, a darkly comic succession:

  The Lockbreaker stepped between Lady Shadows and her prey. He began to sing, but she knew his tricks too well, and had torn his essence asunder before he could scarce begin the first note. He fell aside, struggling to maintain his being in a world without shadows.

  The angelic dog appeared, sans box. He lunged, brilliant jaws snapping, flashing with light. He fared better, managing to extract a few bites from her wings, but in a moment Shadows had speared him through and cast him aside onto the pale dust.

  Strange creatures came next—lumbering golems made of some soft brightly colored clay. They rose unexpectedly from the soil and marshalled, all six or seven of them, to defend the hero. They conjoined together into a towering figure, but the razored darkness of Lady Shadows separated them easily into scattered, twitching fragments. The fragments crawled to rejoin themselves, but not quickly enough to impede the Lady.

  Finally, as Lady Shadows stepped toward the unconscious hero, a crimson flame dropped from above. It was Samantha, and her fiery chain made Shadows pay for every step. Samantha met her fate without so much as a squeak of pain. Shadows rent her apart with a grisly crack; she collapsed onto a ground parched for color as much as moisture, greedily drinking her ruby red blood as it provided both. She hadn’t had a chance to sing, either.

  No one else came. The Lady’s shadows, quavering and tremulous now, remained plenty strong enough to lance a sleeping child through the heart.

  Those shadows were not strong enough to protect her from the three-legged wolf that appeared shortly thereafter, whose lameness had rendered him too late to save the hero, but not too late to exact vengeance.