[Mkguild] Snow Storm: Storm Front (2/4)

[Hallan Mirayas]

    Xavier paced, as unsettled as the storm that
raged outside.  It felt like someone, probably Saroth, was raising a
shield around the Keep, drawing the lightning and diverting it away from the
flammable roofs of Keeptowne and Euper.  That, at least, was going well.
 He wished he could say the same for the rest of it all.

 

    He had not liked Alexis.  She was too
wild, too forward in his opinion, even for a Metamorian.  Worse, she had
encouraged Drift into some of his wildest and most reckless schemes, chief
among them the wing-shaped contraption his pacing took him past with every
turn.  Still he would not have wished such an end on anyone, and if what
Drift said was true, Xavier intended the justice visited on her murderer to be
swift and terrible indeed.

 

    For the moment, though, it was on Drift that he
focused, and that was more than enough to worry about.  The samoyed had
seemed to recover his energy on the walk home, and threw himself into drawing
in his workshop.  This was not the good thing it could have been.
 Drift's movements were jerky and broken-edged, almost spastic, as if he
were leaping from idea to idea without ever managing to settle on one long
enough for it to materialize.  He scribbled and scratched things out
seemingly at random, muttering to himself under his breath too quietly for
Xavier to catch more than a few snatches of words.  Most of what he did
understand was 'No', just before the parchment being drawn upon was flung
aside, fluttering down to join a growing pile of rejection.  The nobleman
winced at the expensive waste, mentally tallying the price of the reams Drift
would go through at this rate and comparing it to what he knew of the samoyed's
finances.  Then he caught himself and scowled.  Now was not the time
for such thoughts.

 

    Another barely-started drawing fluttered to the
floor, this one physically torn by the samoyed's claws.  Enough was
enough, Xavier decided.  He reached for Drift's shoulder to pull him
away... and thought better of it when his approach was met with a cavernous
growl.  Drift hadn't even looked up.  Deciding on an alternative
target, Xavier seized Drift's remaining supply of parchment, but Drift's own
hand came down squarely on top of his, pinning the whole stack in place.

 

    "Leave it," Drift growled.

 

    "Drift-"

 

    The growl became a snarl.  "I said
leave it!"  The samoyed's grip tightened, painfully squeezing
Xavier's retracted claws.

 

    The leopard's eyes narrowed.  Building and
maintaining the wind shield in Euper had depleted his lightning rods, but with
a massive thunderstorm outside, that was hardly a handicap.  A strong
electrical jolt into Drift's upper arm popped his hand free, and Xavier whisked
the parchment away.  Drift rose in anger, but stopped short when he saw
what awaited him.  Lightning coursed over the leopard’s dark fur like a
thundercloud given flesh, and the weather mage glared with icy disdain.  "Striking
me," he warned, "would be unwise."

 

    The moment stretched, thick with the crackle of
electricity and the acrid smell of ozone.  Then Drift sank back into his
chair, as if only now realizing what he'd done and been about to do.  He
buried his face in his hands, ashamed.  "I'm sorry.  I didn't
mean to do that."

 

    "I know."  Xavier set the
parchment back down and dripped his lightning shield, then pulled over a stool
and sat so he could be at the samoyed's level.  "This isn't the first
time I've seen you hurting.  But you weren't alone back at Ice Lake, and
you're not alone now.  I promise you, we will get to the bottom of this."

 

    "I shouldn't have left."  Drift
almost whispered it.  "If I had stayed, they'd have stayed focused on
me.  They wouldn't have gone after her."

 

    "You don't know that."

 

    Drift's head snapped up, a flare of rage.
 "It should have been me!  Why wasn't it me?"  Rising,
he stormed out of the room.  Xavier caught up in time to see him screaming
at the stained glass window in his bedroom, the one with the Yew on it.  "Why
wasn't it me?  Why her?  Why did you let me go to the Glen if I was
going to come back to this?"

 

    Xavier's eyes widened in shock.  One did
not talk to the gods like that, no matter what the provocation!  Any
Lothanasi could tell you that, and surely the Ecclesia's Eli was no better.
 This was getting out of hand!  But before he could interrupt, a
knock at the door distracted him.  With a glance at the still ranting
samoyed, he slipped out to see who it was.

 

-----

 

    "Are you sure that this is the spot?"
 The first time Jim Morganson had asked Wolfram that question, the Watch
Investigator had been openly concerned.  Now, doubt was starting to creep
into the goat Keeper's tone, along with a faint hint of 'you had better not be
wasting my time'.  They had searched the burnt-out building for nearly a
quarter of an hour now, without any success at finding Alexis' body.
 Worse, the snow was piling up now that the embers had been quenched,
making their task harder with each passing minute.

 

    "Positive," Wolfram replied,
unflinching.  He would not let his friend down, not after such a blow as
this.  He'd dig the entire building out by himself if he had to.
 Not, he realized a moment later, that he would need to.  The
blackened beam from which he'd just brushed snow bore Drift's bloody handprints,
as well as several broken-off claws embedded in the grain.  "Here,"
he said, beckoning Jim over.  This is the place.  Help me get this
snow and debris cleared away."

 

    It only took them a minute to find the fallen
wall that had pinned Alexis, along with the bloody prints where Drift had
scrambled under it to make his horrible discovery.  Wolfram stooped,
preparing to follow the same path, but Jim stopped him with a hand on his
shoulder.  "Wait.  Something's strange here.  Burned hair
and flesh have a very distinctive smell, but..."  He paused to sniff
the air.  "I'm not catching a whiff of it."

 

    Wolfram's eyes narrowed, his stooped position
giving him the start of a look underneath the wall.  "Something
strange here, too.  No blood pool.  If her throat was cut..."
 A sudden hunch curdled in the ram's gut, and he seized the wall and
heaved.  "This might as well have been lead earlier," he
grunted, "but..."  The wall lifted far too easily and fell aside
with a crash.  Both of them gaped.  There was no body, no blood, only
a strange, blackened handprint burned deep into the floorboards.  The
fingers of the print extended far beyond those of a normal hand, five trails of
charred wood vanishing into the rubble all around. 

 

    "What the hell?"

 

    "Where's the body?"

 

-----

 

    Xavier opened the door on a pimple-faced youth,
either a boy on the cusp of the Curse, or an AR trying to be as old as
possible.  In either case, he was dirty and dressed in rags, and carried a
shapeless bundle well wrapped in cloth.  "Delivery," he said,
pitching his voice low and flicking an anxious glance down the hall.  "For
Snow," he continued, and tried to press the bundle into Xavier's hands.

 

    The noble leopard would have none of it.
 Clawtips gleamed against the wooden doorjamb as he blocked the way, his
other hand keeping its grip on the door beside him, denying either entry or a
place for the package.  "Edward Snow is accepting no deliveries
tonight, especially not from such an obvious vagabond as yourself.  Leave
immediately or I shall call the Watch."

 

    A white-furred arm blurred past Xavier's nose
and slapped the door from his hand, then shouldered the leopard aside with
little care for courtesy.  Drift stepped through the gap.  Sniffing
the air, he fixed his eyes on the bundle.  "Jasmine.  This is
from Alexis."  It wasn't a question.  The look he then turned on
the boy could have etched glass, and his voice rivaled the fierce thunder
outside.  "Tell me why you're here, now, or I -won't- call the
Watch."

 

    The boy's Adam's apple bobbed.  He glanced
down the hall again, this time looking like whatever he was wary of might be a
better choice than facing the unsmiling samoyed.  A small tightening of
Drift's grip on the door convinced him otherwise.  "T-The Lady said I
should give this to you," the boy stammered.  "If anything
happened to her tonight, I mean."

 

    It was the wrong thing to say, but the youth
realized his danger a moment too late.  Drift's left hand closed on the
package as if to take it, but in truth only to pinion the boy's hand to it.
 Then, with a jerk, Drift pulled him in close and seized him by the neck
in his strong right hand.  Heaving the boy off the ground, Drift slammed
him against the wall with enough force to rattle teeth.  If he had
thundered before, he roared now.  "How long?!"

 

    "Wh-ack!"  The boy clutched at
the hand around his neck with all the effectiveness of an ant trying to beat
off an elephant.

 

    "How long did she know she might be in
danger?"  Sensing movement out of the corner of his eye, Drift
snarled, "Xavier, if you shock me again, I will drive you into
the ground like a tent spike!"  He slammed the boy into the wall
again.  "How long!"

 

    "Drift, he can't breathe!"

 

    With a twitch of annoyance, Drift loosened his
grip, but only fractionally.  The boy gasped for air.  Leaning in
until his breath ruffled the youth's hair, Drift dropped his voice almost to a
whisper.  "I'll ask you one last time.  How long did she know
this was coming?"   Only momentarily deterred by Drift's
unusual, if obviously heartfelt, threat, Xavier paused in the midst of
retrieving his rapier to listen.

 

    "I don't know!" the boy squealed.
 "She just gave this to me today!  Said you'd know what to do
with it!  That's it!  She always plays her cards close to the vest!"

 

    Drift glared at him for a long time, narrowed
brown eyes boring through the youth's skull while thunder cracked outside.
 Finally, he loosened his grip on the package enough for the boy to slip
his hand free, while still keeping a hold on it himself.  "That does
sound like something Alexis would do," he growled.  He set the boy
down, his grip loosening with the slowness of muscles made sore by exertion.
 "Fine.  Get out of here.  Don't let me see you again."
 The boy didn't have to be told twice:  he vanished down the hall as
if chased by all the hounds of Hell.  Drift didn't bother to watch him go.
 He shut the door with a negligent flick of his wrist and took the package
into his workshop.

 

    Xavier stared.  He had seen Drift hurting.
 He had seen Drift berserk.  But he had never seen Drift like this
before.  It scared him and, for the first time, he felt reassured to feel
the weight of his sword on his hip.  He followed once he'd finished buckling
it on, but what he saw when he got there froze him in place.  The package,
unwrapped on the desk, appeared to be a rectangular wooden box.  Opened,
it revealed a long lutin knife, stained faintly red as if from some long-ago
use.  Drift leaned against the desk as if he might collapse, holding a
crumpled piece of paper in a fist against his forehead.  His features
writhed in a dying effort not to lose control.  "Damn it, Alexis,"
he whimpered.  "Damn it, damn it, damn it-"

 

    The explosion, when it came, was terrible.
 With a roar, Drift flung the paper down, rounded on his workshop, and
started smashing.  Work of months, shattered against the wall or
pulverized beneath a hammer blow of his fist.  His bat-winged glider he
heaved up with both hands and slammed to the floor, breaking its back in a
crash of rending wood and metal.  Painstakingly shaped and lacquered
fabric shredded under a stomping foot, claws ripping.  Xavier tried to
pull him away and wound up flattened.  He had never dreamed Drift could be
that strong.  With barely an effort, the samoyed had bodily thrown the
leopard, knocking the wind out of him on the stone floor.  This would, he
promised, be the last time he underestimated the smith.  By the time
Xavier got his breath back, Drift stood in the midst of complete ruin, chest
heaving.

 

    A flare of temper flashed across Xavier's mind.
 How dare that peasant strike me!  He quashed the thought, but
the ember smoldered on in spite of his best efforts, sharpening his tone and
edging his words as he picked himself up.  "Do you feel better now?"
 He twitched.  He hadn't meant to say that.  He pushed on.
 "Edward Snow, you're coming with me.  I don't care where we go,
whether it's the Follower chapel or the Lothanasi temple, but you're going to
talk to someone.  Preferably without smashing more of your life's
work."  The words hung in the air like a poison cloud, and Xavier
nearly slapped himself.  What was wrong with him?  He opened his
mouth, tried to apologize, but the words caught in his throat.  He tried
again, failed, and settled for looking down and away, ashamed.  Finally,
what he'd meant to say came out.  "You should," he said quietly,
"talk with the Lothanasa or Father Hough."

 

    It was too late.  He could see it in
Drift's eyes.  The samoyed's glare was acid.  Without a word, Drift
stalked from the room.

 

    "Where are you going?"

 

    "To the privy," Drift snapped,
neither pausing nor looking back.  "Can I at least do -that- alone?"

 

    Chastened, Xavier turned away.  This was
beyond out of hand.  This was catastrophic.  What had possessed him
to say such things?  The leopard ran his fingers through his metallic
hair, trying without success to settle jangling nerves.  He wished that
Wolfram and Misha would hurry.  There were too many coincidences swirling
about, too many wild emotions, too many secrets.  He picked up the paper
that Drift had dropped, smoothed it out as best he could, and held it up to the
light.  It was, he hoped, time for some of those secrets to be revealed.

 

    As he expected, it was a letter from Alexis.
 My beloved Edward.  If you are reading this...  Xavier's
eyes narrowed to slits as he continued down the page.  "You idiot
woman," he growled under his breath once he'd finished, his ears laying
flat with anger and disbelief.  If even half of this was true, she should
never have let them leave for Glen Avery.  She should have told them all,
and he and Misha would have taken it to the Duke himself.  A jealous
business rival, corruption in the Watch, murder, attempted murder, conspiracy...
 It read like madness, and yet it all fit.  Compellingly so.
 His own family had been under the thumb of a rival before, and he knew
the depths to which such people could stoop.  "Damn Loriod," he
cursed, the memory of the fat man springing unbidden into mind.  What he
would have given to put his claws through that blackmailing bastard's-

 

    Pain startled him from his vengeful reverie,
and he opened a hand he hadn't realized he'd clenched.  Blood stained
Alexis' letter- his own.  In his anger, he'd put a claw through it and
into his palm.  What was more, both of his hands shook, so hard that the
writing of the letter blurred out of legibility.  Every instinct he had
was screaming at him to run, to flee for his life and not look back.  In a
moment of stunning clarity, he realized why, and every hair on his body stood
on end as he put it all together.  Greed, deception, rage... he dropped
the letter as if it were on fire and backed away from the boxed lutin blade as
from the Glen Avery trapmaster's most lethal creation.  Where anger had
edged his voice before, terror now galvanized it.  "Drift!
 Drift, we need to leave, right now!  Do you hear-"

 

    He sensed the attack from behind a fraction of
a second too late.

 

-----

 

    Drift paced in his room, his thoughts flying in
all directions.

 

    Don't think.  Don't feel.

 

    I have to do something!

 

    Nothing left.  Nothing left for me.

 

    I have to do -something-!

 

    Don't think about the blood.  Don't think
about-

 

    I HAVE TO DO-

 

    The image of the knife flashed in his eye.
 The cold of the hilt remembered itself on his fingertips.  A new
thought whispered into his mind.

 

    Something.

 

    He glanced toward the workshop.  Xavier would stop him.
 So would Misha or Wolfram if he didn't get out of here in time.
 They wouldn't understand.  None of them would understand.
  He considered the leopard-man again, this time not as a friend, but
as an obstacle in his way.  His back was turned...

 

    You could-

 

    No.  His hands closed on a different weapon instead, lifting it
carefully to minimize the noise.  Just hold still, Xavier, and this
will all be over in a moment...

 

-----

 

    Drift's only chair smashed down on Xavier with
enough force to shatter it.  The hidden compartment inside broke open, scattering
his mother's keepsakes across the room.  He hesitated.

 

    Hurry!

 

    He nodded.  There would be time to pick up
once he'd beaten a confession out of Arkos Linafex.

 

    Or killed him.

 

    Or killed him.  He'd certainly dreamed of
it often enough.  Xavier groaned, stirred.  Drift punched him.
 This time the leopard stayed down.  It might come to killing,
Drift thought, and his eyes narrowed.  He won't get away again.
 Not this time.  "Sorry, Xavier," he said aloud,
resting a hand on the leopard's chest to make sure he was still breathing.
 He was.  "You are far too dangerous for me to risk being
gentle."  He allowed himself a moment, over the voice's protest, to
carefully prop Xavier's head with the cushion from the broken chair.

 

    But enough sentiment.  Rising to his feet,
Drift first retrieved a particular vest from his workshop, then grabbed the
smithing hammer from the forge.  He turned next toward his bedroom... and
his eyes fell on his grandfather's Canticles.  It, too, had fallen from
the broken chair in which it had been hidden, and it now laid splayed open
face-down on the floor.

 

    Hurry!

 

    Drift walked over to it, picked it up-

 

    There's no time!

 

    -dusted it off-

 

    He'll get away!

 

    -and closed it.  Setting it gently on the
table, he picked up the knife instead and buckled it to his belt. Walking into
his bedroom, he lifted his hammer and eyed the stained glass window that he had
once loved so much.  Lightning flashed beyond it.  He didn't care.
 "He's not getting away this time," he promised.  "I'll
make sure of it."

 

-----

 

    The imp Miroweke paused under a shuttered
window of Agemnos' palace, his ears perking as they caught a voice from within.

 

    "What do you mean, he's gone?  I
tasked you specifically with keeping him occupied!"  A long
pause followed.  Then, in a voice so tightly controlled it could carve
apart steel, Agemnos seethed, "He is far too powerful a rogue element to
be allowed to roam unsupervised at this critical juncture.  Find him.
 Now."

 

    A splash followed, as of a scrying pool
forcefully dismissed, then a dark growl.  "Cousin, you had better not
be doing what I think you're doing."

 

-----

 

    The Snow hammer spun into the night, shards of
broken glass cascading down in its wake.  More followed as Drift broke out
the remaining pieces of the window, then stepped up on the sill.
 Crouching to fit into the opening, he squinted against the wind and
driving snow, planning out his path.  Soundlessly behind him, a low
doorway opened in the wall, and metal tapped on stone.  Drift half-spun,
his shocked expression matched by that of his newest guest.

 

    "Uncle?"

 

    Jump NOW!  Don't let it stop you!

 

    Drift flung himself into the storm, Madog's
face appearing momentarily in the window before darkness and distance swept it
from view.  Freefalling down the side of the Keep, he waited until nearly
the last moment to activate the magic of the vest Misha had made for him.
 Even with that precaution, the wind pushed him well clear of his intended
landing zone, and he winced in pained anticipation as the Keep stables rose
from the storm to greet him.

 

    The Polygamites paused in the midst of an
argument when they heard something land on the roof of the stables.  Every
heard turned upward at the soft thud and slide of snow.  "What the-"
exclaimed the head stallion, and he stepped outside to see what had made the
sound.  More snow had drifted up against the stable door, however, and it
took him a few extra moments to push it open.  By that time, Drift was already
gone, vanished into the night.

 

    "Huh," the horse-man grunted and
pulled the door shut again before more heat escaped from the warm stable.
 "Must have been the wind."

 

    Unseen, a bat-winged shadow flitted from a
nearby rooftop, disappearing into the night after the samoyed.  Another
followed a moment later, careful to keep out of sight of the first.

 

    Deep in the shadows of the stable, a
dark-haired man smiled, swathed in a cloak that rippled like smoke.  He
followed, unhindered by either the night or the snow, unconcerned by any hazard
that might be hidden there.  His tracks and Drift's faded away as he
passed, vanishing as if they'd never been.  Back in the stable, the
argument faded, and for at least one place in Metamor, peace descended for the
night.

 		 	   		  
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