CHAPTER 1

-

I

-

"Someone’s on the move,” a voice called out by the flickering light of a single candle. At the same time a number of people squirmed to life. They looked up in unison.

A glance at the rough but simple beds lining the walls made it clear this was an inn. Up by the ceiling floated a man; he was upside down about ten feet off the floor. His body excreted a thread that those on the ground could never make out, no matter how they strained their eyes, and the man entrusted his full weight to it, curled up and dangling like a spider. His arms, his legs, and the fingers he presently used to scratch at his chin were disproportionately long compared to his body. This was the man who could even do battle in the stratosphere—Speeny.

“One of the threads I strung around the village just broke—the one on the route north. Which would mean they’re headed for Janos, I suppose.”

“Who is it?” asked the monklike figure—Courbet. His right arm hung in a sling looped around his neck.

“Judging by the way the thread was cut—it’d have to be D.”

“For what purpose?” came a woman’s voice.

In a corner of the dilapidated room was a ceramic pitcher filled to the brim with water. Although there was no sign of anyone, that was where the voice originated. It had to be Lucienne.

“I don’t know,” Speeny replied.

Almost simultaneously, another voice said, “I thought this might happen.”

Ringing with both the composure of age and the power of youth, it made all the others turn in its direction.

“Oh!”

“Is that Curio the Preacher?”

“Has he joined us at long last?”

Courbet, Lucienne, and Speeny spoke in near unison, so afraid they couldn’t help but say something.

The figure in the doorway—which had stood permanently open since the automatic doors lost their power source—wore a hooded robe like the “missionary,” Courbet, but the color of his was a far more sinister vermilion, and he was shrouded in a weird air that left the group of freaks stunned and reluctant to approach him. Apparently he was one of the most powerful of the seven assassins.

As another figure on the floor was about to rise, he insisted in a tone overflowing with dignity, “Don’t.”

Coming down to the floor from the ceiling, Speeny said, “Well, then—why would D go to the village of Janos alone?”

“If you consider for a moment how they earn their daily bread in that village, the answer will soon come to you. Such is to be expected of the greatest man on the Frontier, with his nearest competition light years behind. Oh, but he’s a shrewd one.”

“How—how so?”

“I heard your plan through Speeny’s thread. From that, I can only assume he’s gone off to get Time-Bewitching Incense.”

A murmur spread from the mouths of the other three.

Time-Bewitching Incense—a scent that could turn day into night for the vampiric Nobility, it was a two-edged sword that at times saved their eternal lives from destruction, while at other times left them critically exposed during what should’ve been the inviolate night.

“Ah, so they’ll turn day into night?” Lucienne said, her tone carrying anger. “If they do that, then even by day they can have triple their expected numbers. I suppose even Count Braujou and Duchess Miranda have never seen a night so filled with daylight.”

“Well, then, we must do something to stop him,” groaned the other man in a vestment—Courbet.

“What can you do, wounded like that?” Curio remarked coldly. He looked down at the figure who lay on the floor. The person who’d lain moaning and groaning but otherwise unable to move since Curio’s identity had become clear was Jessup the Beheader.

“From what I can see, Speeny’s also been wounded, and Lucienne is hardly unharmed. As for those three—two of them are dyed-in-the-wool Nobility, and the other seems to possess power every bit as great as a Noble’s. The lot of you would have no easy time slaying them now.”

“But we can’t just stand back and do nothing. We were instructed to wait until you arrived, and now we have to strike a blow against them. To be honest, I was beginning to wonder what we’d do. Of course, if we had to, we could slay all three of them easily, but now that D’s alone, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to engage him.”

“Precisely. That rascal’s gone off to Janos alone in the hopes we wouldn’t notice. But now that we’re wise to him—”

These two objections were voiced by Courbet and Speeny, respectively.

In response, the figure in the vermilion robe said, “Callas is on the way there.”

There was an explosion of astonished voices.

“Oh—the Diva?”

“Has she been brought back, too?” Speeny said, and his joy was so great that as he descended from the ceiling head first, a victorious smile was already on his face.

“Her songs might do the trick,” Lucienne said, her voice not sounding pleased at all, but rather ringing with fear.

“And I’ll send along one more for good measure.”

“Who?”

The figure in vermilion moved, and a yelp arose from the floor. He’d delivered a kick to the plump shadow.

“You’re not wounded all that badly, you layabout. I’ve already notified Callas. Hurry off to Janos. If you don’t, I’ll treat you to a sermon.”

Shrieking, the fleshy figure of Jessup the Beheader leaped up without any further hesitation.

-

It was late at night when D entered the village of Janos. The moon glowed like a fire in the night sky. Still, it was nothing compared to D’s handsome features as he sat astride his steed. Though the moon merely glowed by reflected light, D’s beauty was the source of its own luminance.

Perhaps the villagers did their utmost to hide their presence from passing travelers, as the air was free of strange scents, yet D could detect the faintest traces of bromine that couldn’t be concealed. Rows of houses made of stone and Quonset-hut-styled buildings covered with vinyl awnings slumbered in the moonlight. The latter were domes for growing extremely poisonous herbs, the mere smell of which could spell death, while all the fields around the town also displayed lovely expanses of poisonous flowers and plants.

Taking the main street through the center of town, D halted his steed in front of a certain house. It was just an ordinary building, with nothing to distinguish it from any of the other houses.

Getting down from his horse and rapping on the wooden door, the Hunter had to wait a short time before a masculine voice cursed him through the wall, “Just what hour of the day do you think it is, you daft bastard? I’ve got a good mind to douse you with poison goo!”

“Sorry, but this is urgent.”

“Shut your hole, you—”

The wrathful voice faded away suddenly. It was like the tide quickly ebbing. When the man spoke again, it was in a tone of fear and surprise—and nostalgia.

“No, it couldn’t be—is that you, D?”

“I’ve come to ask a favor of you.”

“H-h-h-hold on. I-I-I-I’ll open right up.”

On the other side of the wooden door, there was a rattle and a great clamor that gave way to a cry of pain. Apparently the man had banged into something. The bar was lifted, and the wooden door opened inward with a creak.

The silhouette against the light quickly resolved itself into an unusually scrawny man with gray hair. His wasn’t the face of an old man. However, his dry and lusterless skin and exposed bones made him look terribly old.

“What in blazes is it? It’s been three whole years. Never thought I’d be seeing you like this.”

“I need a favor.”

“You need a favor from me? Fair enough, since it’s thanks to you I’m still alive. Not that I’ve done a hell of a lot with my life, but I never forget a debt. Go ahead and name it.”

“I want you to make Time-Bewitching Incense,” D said.

The man’s jaw dropped. It fell with a vigor almost unthinkable for a man in his condition.

Taking a step back, the man allowed D to enter his house. After bolting the door again, he led the Hunter to a cramped room. They sat in crude chairs on opposite sides of a round table.

“You ask the damnedest things, don’t you? But you being the man called D and all, I guess there’s no helping it. I’ll get started on whipping it up right away,” the man said, having finally recovered his calm.

But D told him coolly, “I’d like you to do something special to it.”

“Really? What?”

After D had finished explaining what he wanted, the man inquired in a strangely soft tone, “When do you want it?”

“I have to bring it back to Marthias by noon tomorrow.”

“Which means I’ve only got tonight, until daybreak.” The man shrugged his shoulders, saying plainly, “It can’t be done.”

“That’s why I came to you, the Frontier sector’s preeminent toxicologist—Karim Mubbe.”

“I’ll give it a shot,” he said, donning a grin so intrepid it seemed he must’ve intended to help all along. “Well, I’m gonna hole up in my workshop. But my wife and kids are sleeping. Try not to make any noise.”

The man didn’t wait for a reply, but disappeared behind the only bronze door in the place. Once the door had been locked, he opened an iron panel set in the wall to the left of it and peeked inside. On a rustic bed, his wife was stroking the hair of their six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter. As Mubbe turned and was about to shut the iron panel, his wife shot him a glance.

“Dear . . .”

“It’s okay.”

And saying this, Mubbe closed the panel.

His workshop was lined with shelves filled with innumerable glass jars of poisonous herbs, and the greenhouse connected to the west wall was used for raising other virulent plants and insects. The jars and greenhouse were all made to double or triple thickness, because even the slightest crack could turn his entire house into a hell on Earth.

“Now then,” he said, taking a gas mask off the wall and putting it on so it covered his head and chest. Donning gloves, he opened the door that led to the greenhouse. There was an airlock just large enough to accommodate a single person. Entering it, he shut the outer door, and then opened the inner one. There was a second airlock. After he’d passed through a third airtight chamber, he finally reached the greenhouse. In there, the air itself was a toxin.

The profusion of fearsome flowers was a thing of beauty. This toxic hell was adorned with crimson and indigo, purple and pale blue, and luxurious shades of green that seemed like nothing that could possibly be of this world. But Mubbe didn’t even glance at these blooms, of which he never tired, going instead into the center of the greenhouse.

Roped off on all sides, there bloomed a stark-white blossom. Its soil was a strange hue, due to special care and nutrients. Though it resembled a lily, it had two petals more and a much softer overall impression. Even here in Janos, famed for its poisons, no one but this man knew the transparent sap that dripped from the stalk was a component of Time-Bewitching Incense.

“You only put out a stalk once in a hundred years—come on, baby,” Mubbe said, gently beginning to push the soil away from the plant with his gloved hands. The slightest scrape to the stalk or leaves would cause the components of the plant to change in an instant.

Gently, patiently, and with almost mechanical precision, he continued what he was doing, stopping only once to say the strangest thing: “I’m really sorry about this, D.”

-

II

-

A lovely sound drifted out of the depths of the night. Twined in the wind, pushed along by the moonlight, the sound took a long time arriving. Before the door to its destination, the sound let out a faint sigh but slipped in through a crack without the slightest pause.

In the room, a figure leaned against one wall. There was nobody else there.

Three o’clock in the morning. Everything was draped in a false death.

The figure against the wall suddenly opened his eyes. His pupils were so black, a dark gleam seemed to spill from them. Turning his gaze to the doorway, D quickly pulled away from the wall.

Once outside, he heard it clearly.

From the vicinity of his left hip, a hoarse voice said, “That’s a hell of a fine voice. I’ve heard of sirens singing to enchant captains and get them to smash their ships on the rocks, but this singer’s got them beat. Watch yourself, D.”

D was already advancing on foot. Had the hoarse voice’s warning been in vain? Had the nocturnal song already robbed him of his senses?

Advancing with silent footsteps, the vision of beauty in black was beckoned to the central square of the village. A well stood in the center of the cobblestoned expanse. And beside it stood a woman. Her seemingly naked form stood out in the moonlight. D’s eyes were able to see that her diaphanous dress was a pale purple.

Stillness descended, for the woman had shut her lips. She didn’t seem particularly proud of the song that had flowed thinly but deliberately all the way to Mubbe’s house, and D displayed no emotion at all.

“I am Callas the Diva,” the woman said, the black hair above her brow adorned by a golden circlet that glittered in the moonlight. Near its center, the circlet rose in a relief of a bizarre creature’s face, the eyes of which were set with blue jewels.

“But then, I can’t expect that you’ll answer me,” she continued. “You’ve heard my song, after all. Haven’t you, D?”

There was no reply.

Perhaps taking this as proof of her spell, the woman formed her thin lips into a grin. It was a transparent smile.

“We’ve long since figured out what you’re up to. I’m an assassin sent to slay you. Normally, I’d have waited until the Time-Bewitching Incense was completed, but I happened to see you when you came into the village.”

A mysterious emotion resided in the woman’s eyes. Perhaps it was grief—or passion.

She continued, “You were simply too gorgeous. My heart threatened to burn down to nothing when I saw your handsome features. But that will prove to be your misfortune. Any man capable of inspiring love in me would surely attract other women as well. And if you’re truly a man, you’re bound to capitalize on that. Alas, that I couldn’t bear. Still, I can’t help but picture it. Laugh at me if you like, D. But I would rather do away with you than have you love any other woman. Here and now, without waiting for you to get the Time-Bewitching Incense.”

A dagger appeared in the woman’s right hand, both sides honed razor sharp. Raising it with an elegant motion, Callas hurled the blade. It sped toward D’s chest, but halted a split second before hitting him.

“What?”

As the diva’s eyes went wide with shock, the figure in black told her, “I’ve heard of Callas the Diva. Now, tell me the name of the other assassin.”

“But you—didn’t you listen to my song?” the woman groaned in astonishment.

“I heard it.”

The Hunter’s answer came from midair. The bounding D swung down the sword he held overhead, and he seemed to slice the woman in half from the top of her head down to the breastbone—but she remained motionless in her dress while D’s blade narrowly missed her left shoulder, slicing only air. A second slash mowed through the night air and her torso, but the blade relayed no resistance to D’s hand, and Callas only laughed haughtily.

“It would seem that you did indeed hear my song. And having done so, there’s no way for you to strike me.”

Like the sailors bewitched by the sirens of legend, were those who’d heard Callas’s song drained of their souls without even realizing it . . . or perhaps left cowards?

“Take your own life,” the lovely lady whispered.

After the horizontal swipe of his blade, D had taken a stance with his sword held out straight at eye level, but he kept his eyes gently closed.

Disbelief squirmed into Callas’s expression. She’d gotten the impression the gorgeous young man who’d swung his sword with such deadly precision had suddenly become a completely different being.

“You’re . . .”

Before she could say another word, D opened his eyes. They gave off a blood light.

As the singer shrieked, the Hunter’s blade danced out over her head once again. It was exactly as before, but this time it would be the end of Callas.

However, a heartbeat later, D reeled wildly in midair. Fresh blood gushed from his back, falling on him like a heavy spring rain when he landed and dropped to one knee.

“Heh! How do you like that?” another voice laughed from the same direction D had entered the square. Grabbing the handle of the ax he’d driven into the ground, and still somewhat off balance was Jessup the Beheader.

“I just got here and was looking for a place to conceal myself, and what should I happen across but this scene! Callas, I hope you know you owe me for this. Sing me one of them songs that got you piles and piles of gold. Oof!” he grunted, finally managing to lift his ax but still unsteady on his feet—but D knew better than anyone how fearsome he was with an ax that never hit anything. The Hunter’s backbone was shattered.

Though this man appeared at first glance to be incompetent, he was truly worthy of being counted among the Ultimate Noble’s seven assassins if he could hack open D’s back, even if the Hunter had been entirely focused on his deadly battle with Callas at the time.

“But, you know,” the beheader continued, “you’re quite a piece of work too. I thought I’d completely blindsided you, but it seems you saw it coming after all. Normally, your torso would’ve been chopped in two.”

Jessup warped his lips into a smirk.

“Well, did you have a nice taste of the great Jessup the Beheader’s ‘dark-cloud chop’? I can cut you without even aiming for you,” the man declared.

Planting his unsteady feet, he raised his ax. Though his eyes were trained on D, his ax was pointed in a different direction.

“From this distance, not even you can reach me with your blade, D. But my ax can cut you. Hey, watch this, Callas. I’m about to take the best-looking Hunter on the Frontier and chop ’im to pieces! I’ll start with his right hand.”

In the moonlight, the Hunter’s coat spread like the wings of a black bird. D had pulled in one arm and leaped into the air. His fist was aimed at Jessup’s face.

“I’ll fix you!” Jessup shouted.

The ax limned a silvery arc. With a thunk, D’s fist was chopped off at the wrist. Black blood spouted out.

D kicked off the ground, just like a mystic bird soaring across the surface of the moon—or an enormous and exquisite bat.

Staggering, Jessup was still able to launch his next attack—this time at the Hunter’s left leg.

But down by that foot, a faint, hoarse voice murmured, “Figured him out?”

The reply to that was a flash from Jessup’s ax.

D’s thigh split open, and fresh blood gushed out. Blood from his right leg.

A flash of white light pierced Jessup between his surprised eyes, and something black sprayed out as the beheader tumbled backward. The man’s eyes were still wide with disbelief as they watched D turn to go after the diva.

“She got away?” the hoarse voice said from the ground as D approached it. Callas had vanished.

Sheathing his sword and retrieving his left hand with his right, D pressed the severed limb against the wound and let go. The wound vanished in seconds, and the surface of his palm rippled like water. What formed there was a little face with eyes, a nose, and a mouth. It looked like nothing in this world.

The little face looked down at Jessup on the ground and scolded him with relish, saying, “What, you didn’t think we could figure out the pattern after you screwed up three times, you dolt?”

Although Jessup’s “dark-cloud chop” seemed to cut his opponents when he swung his blade in the wrong direction, his swings were not entirely haphazard. If that were the case, no one could ever beat him.

Having been cut twice, D had let his left hand be severed by the third blow in order to discover the relationship between where Jessup struck with his ax and where the cuts appeared. The second wound had been dealt to him when he was entirely off guard, but he used the ones before and after it to learn to read the pattern, twisting in midair so that his leg was dealt no more than a shallow cut. And the reason he’d drawn the beheader’s attention to his left hand was because he needed his right to wield his sword.

The slice in the peculiar material of his coat had long since closed, and it seemed that D himself had also made a full physical recovery.

“That’s one down—what, six to go? We’ve got a long haul ahead of us,” said the face in his left hand. Its tone was far from light. Based on the one who’d just been slain and the other who’d escaped, it could tell with great certainty just how fearsome the remaining five would be.

“I wonder where that woman disappeared to. She’s probably hiding behind something, waiting for a crack at us.”

Bending down, D picked up a stone off the ground and threw it into the air. The parabola it traced was intersected by another line that cut through it at an angle. The stone dropped to the ground.

“You’re still under the effects of Callas’s song, eh? You got off lightly. Anyone else probably would’ve killed himself a hundred times over. You’d better slay Callas before it comes to that.”

“Fix me up.”

Picking up Jessup’s body, D hurled it toward the wooden fence at the southwest side of the square. The enormous corpse looked to weigh in excess of two hundred pounds, but it whizzed through the air like a fastball to fall in a thicket far beyond the fence. The Hunter didn’t have the least bit of regard for the remains. His cold-blooded demeanor was that of someone who didn’t consider it even an empty husk.

“I’m already on it. The problem’s your spinal column. This is gonna take a little while.”

Not replying to this, D started to walk back the way he’d come. The movements of this man who’d been chopped through the backbone were so elegant, they could’ve made the moon itself swoon.

-

III

-

When he returned to Mubbe’s house, the owner just happened to be poking his head out of the back room.

“I’ve done it,” he said.

Perhaps due to the materials he worked with day in and day out, his fingernails were melted and the joints on his right hand were swollen, but in it he gripped a single blue candle.

“Genuine Time-Bewitching Incense! It was a rush job, so it might not be a hundred percent effective, but it should work for your purposes. Not that I have any idea what those purposes would be.”

The toxin specialist wore the smile of satisfaction of an artist who’s put his whole body and soul into his work. D stared at him and said, “Try lighting it.”

“Excuse me?” Mubbe’s mouth fell open. Shaking his head, he said, “Hey, it’s night right now. If I were to light this thing . . .”

Night would become day. As a dhampir, D wouldn’t experience the same hellish agony that a Noble might, but it would still be a rather painful ordeal.

“Light it,” D said, a steely ring of intimidation to his voice.

Gazing stupidly at the Hunter’s handsome face, Mubbe finally shrugged and replied, “Okay. Just don’t come crying to me about how bright it gets.”

Taking one of his homemade matches off the table and striking it, Mubbe brought the pale blue flame to the candle’s wick. The instant a small light sparked, a great shudder passed through D. Though he had human blood in his veins, the sudden change from night to day wasn’t one the Hunter could withstand effortlessly. His blood reversed its flow, and his metabolism was thrown into disarray. Noble blood couldn’t escape its fate. More than a few dhampirs had been driven mad by as much.

Several streaks of sweat rolled down D’s paraffin-pale cheeks. As his body trembled weakly, the organs within it screamed and squirmed with white-hot agony.

“Damn—I’ll put it out!”

Unable to stand it any longer, Mubbe reached over. No sooner had he felt a gust of wind like a cold breath skim by the end of his nose than the fire was extinguished. His body’s senses told him it was night again.

Turning to look at D, Mubbe saw the left hand the Hunter had raised to the candle open to take it in its grip. Though he got the impression he’d glimpsed something like a human face in the palm of D’s hand, he soon forgot about it.

“Are you okay?” he asked D.

“I’ll manage,” the Hunter replied coolly, not a mote of discomfort in his tone. “Karim Mubbe, you’ve certainly done your job.”

Taking a coin from his coat pocket, D laid it on the table.

Mubbe was puzzled. For something like Time-Bewitching Incense, the going rate would be fifty golden Mircalla coins. But the sight of the slightly larger and thicker coin triggered something in his brain. His eyes opened wide.

Murmuring, “It can’t be,” Mubbe slowly picked it up. His hand was shaking. As he held the coin in his palm and stared at it intently, the shaking spread to the rest of his body.

“This . . . this is a Sacred Ancestor coin . . . ,” he said in a tone choked with wonder and fear. Faint as his words were, they hung in the air for a long time.

“They were minted in the Capital to commemorate the ten thousandth anniversary of the Sacred Ancestor’s birth. As I recall, only fifty were made—a real treasure among treasures. Anyone who got one—even a human—had something so valuable it was as good as being dubbed a Noble. D—where the hell did you get this? Hell, even if you wanted to get one, you couldn’t. Unless you had it from the very start, that is. D, just who are you?”

“I’ve given you your reward,” D said, taking hold of the candle and getting up.

A short time after the unearthly beauty of that darkness in human form had gone and the door had closed, Mubbe’s wife appeared in the doorway to the back room.

“Did I wake you up?”

Shaking her head, his wife said in a tone that was practically a song, “No. I was out anyway.”

“What about the little ones?”

“They’re asleep,” she replied, and then she smiled. “No, that’s not true. Don’t you remember? We don’t have any kids.”

Amazed and numb, Mubbe shook his head.

That’s impossible. But she’s right. We never had any kids in the first place . . . Has the little woman always been this sexy? She’s supposed to be squat and tough, with the smell of dirt and sweat about her . . . Wait a minute. Come to think of it, she took ill during that epidemic six years back, and then—

“Everyone’s dead,” Mubbe mumbled, convincing himself.

“That’s right. No one’s left here to keep you company. Can you stand being all alone? No? Then take your own life,” said the woman who until a moment ago had been Mubbe’s wife, bringing her lips to his right ear.

A low, gentle melody flowed between her lips and his ear. A song.

“This song calls for your own death . . . even if it didn’t work on D.”

Before long, the woman pulled away from him and gave him a seductive smile. There could be no mistaking Callas the Diva.

Mubbe got up and stepped through the door to his workshop on rubbery legs. Going over to the row of gas cylinders by the wall, he reached for a valve. It contained the most powerful poisonous gas imaginable, a colorless and odorless mixture of toxins extracted from three thousand varieties of plants.

Shortly thereafter, there was the hiss of escaping gas and the sound of a body falling. Once she’d heard that, the lovely and wicked diva slipped through the doorway and into the darkness as if seeking fresh applause.

-

A morose air drifted through the dilapidated boarding house.

“Jessup was slain, was he?” the missionary Courbet practically groaned.

The elegant woman who responded with a quiet nod was the fiendish diva Callas. She’d just finished recounting the events that had transpired in the village of Janos.

“And D definitely got his hands on the Time-Bewitching Incense—is that right, Callas?”

Four faces turned to the source of that question—Curio. His tone was cool, composed, and genial, as if trying to aggravate the woman in her bleak yet explosive mood.

“Indeed,” the diva said with a nod. The beautiful woman responded as if he’d struck a nerve. Even in ordinary conversation, it almost sounded like she was singing. “However, I disposed of the one who made it.”

“It sounds like you really enjoyed yourself,” another voice remarked, and all the rest looked at each other. They’d expected her to put in an appearance. The source of the voice then drew the gaze of them all, just as Curio had done.

It came from just above the ground, from the ceramic water pitcher. A woman’s face rose above the lip of the container like a disembodied head. It was the water witch, Lucienne.

Drilling Callas with her eyes, she said, “It sounds like Jessup died protecting you. Shouldn’t you be more distraught over his loss than any of us?”

“Regardless of what you may think, my heart is filled to bursting with sadness,” Callas said. It looked like a grin was rising to her lips; it sounded like she was singing a song.

“Surely you all heard her. And the look on her face every time she mentions D—it’s as if she were speaking about the love of her life! Are you sure you haven’t been won over by his looks?”

“Everything you say is correct, Lucienne. He’s a gorgeous man. So cold, but with such sorrowful eyes, a nose more perfectly sculpted than that of Adonis, and lips like icy roses that make one pine for even a drop of blood. I’m not the sort of woman who’s so inured to beauty I could ignore such things. But this I swear to you: I can’t allow so exquisite a man to live. I, Callas the Diva, will slay D—with my song.”

Her declaration was so soft yet forceful that Lucienne’s disembodied head couldn’t speak for a moment.

The next remark came from the ceiling.

“Hey! A swift horse approaches from the village of Janos. It just broke through my thread and entered the boundaries of Marthias.”

This time, it was Speeny who drew the eyes of all.

“Is it a man or a woman?” Curio inquired.

“Well, my thread tells me it was a man.”

“The part about coming from Janos worries me.” After a moment’s contemplation Curio continued, “I think I’ll go have a look,” and headed for the door.

A rumble went through the rest of them. Even his allies were frightened by the prospect of this man heading out.

“Curio, sir—do you have a horse?” asked Courbet.

“Don’t worry about that.”

“But he’s so fast—you’ll never catch up to him,” Speeny added from the ceiling.

“There’s no need for you to worry, either.”

The figure in the vermilion robe pushed the door open.

Once outside, he slowly started walking down the highway. Any Frontier person might’ve frantically called out to him to ask if he’d lost his mind, but no one would’ve ever left his house to check. The darkness of night on the Frontier was composed of nothing save pure danger.

After going about sixty feet from the lodging house for workers in the abandoned farming community, Curio heard the ferocious beating of wings overhead.

“My mount is here.”

He looked up, but instead of stars, his eyes beheld an enormous shape spreading out to attack him. A split second later, he was flying through the air. Sharp claws dug into his shoulders, and the nocturnal giant hawk with a thirty-foot wingspan flapped its wings, ready to carry its unprepared prey off to its nest in the north. But it almost immediately pointed south—swinging around in the direction of the village of Marthias.

Was this what Curio considered a mount?

Like an obedient steed the giant hawk did indeed carry Curio to his destination. As Curio was borne up to the heavens, his prayerlike words were only heard by the enormous bird.

-

Would there really be that much difference between racing across the ground and soaring across the sky? In less than a minute, Curio spotted the horse and rider advancing down the highway that stretched like a thread in the moonlight. Pointing at his target, he said in a monotone, “Crush his head.”

Stranger than that remark was the fact that it seemed to be an instruction for the giant hawk. The bird instantly went into a dive. It beat its wings once to change direction and then merely glided. When it next flapped its wings to pull up again, the rider would be missing his head.

Due to their great speed, Curio’s face warped from the air pressure. With thirty feet to go, they were closing on the rider, who was bent low over his steed and riding as fast as he could.

At that second a long spear zipped through the air. Severely bowed, its curve had been taken into consideration and it landed right on target, piercing the great hawk’s abdomen. The rider turned at the sound of the creature’s death screeches, and the giant hawk went into a tailspin as it fell, slamming into the ground and rolling two or three times like an enormous ball of rags, plowing into a vacant lot by the side of the highway and sending grass and dirt flying before it finally halted. Though it’d breathed its last, the giant hawk was still twitching when Curio crawled out from under its body about a minute later.

As Curio staggered to his feet and shook his head, a low but dignified voice weighed heavily on the night air, saying, “So, it shielded you with its wing?”

Not seeming particularly agitated, Curio looked up at the giant who towered some fifteen to twenty feet away.

“You’re . . .”

“Now, why would a hawk do such an admirable thing on an empty stomach? You’re one of Valcua’s seven, aren’t you?”

“Whatever could you be talking about?”

“I was covering D on his way back from Janos, expecting to stop someone from attacking him, and it looks like here we have our first rat in the trap. The nerve of asking us to come out in the daylight! Don’t you have the courage to fight a Noble now, at night? I am Count Braujou.”

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GALLEON VALLEY