Apocalypse: Fairy System, Macronomicon [ebook offline .TXT] 📗

the stairs, causing the imperial guards stationed along the hall to finger their weapons.

The man was no threat to Pikaku, but it was the principle of the thing.

“Listen ‘ere!” Gurand said, pointing at Pikaku. “We joined the empire with the expectation that we would be taken care of! And all we’ve gotten is letters asking for gold we ain’t got! Now we need that dam for our home to prosper. How else are you planning on getting your taxes?”

Pikaku once again suppressed the urge to rub the muscles at the corner of his beak. This was going to be a long day of chasing his own tail. He had to maneuver the chieftain of the tribe to give his word the cost of the dam would be paid back, and the tribesmen had a curious notion of debt.

***Jebediah Trapper***

Jeb watched Eddie walk out the front of City Hall, sweating so profusely that Jeb could see it from his third-story vantage point.

Several other carriages parked outside the circle of uniforms, waiting for their turn to enter City Hall. They were, for the most part, richly dressed keegan.

Shit.

Without his drone next to him, Eddie had no way of communicating with Jeb, and he didn’t want to send the old man back into the wolves’ den.

Jeb picked up the receiver and told Legolas to follow if someone took the book, then he packed up the dish and battery, putting them in their duffle bags and heading out.

The two of them met up at the orphanage. Eddie must have run halfway back, because he arrived first, waiting for Jeb while breathing heavily and glaring.

“Never ask me to do that again,” he said, resting his palms on his knees.

“I have no idea what that was about. I’m sorry.”

“I think it was a parade or something. They were talking about clearing the streets for ‘his’ arrival.”

“Someone important?”

“Sounded like it.” Eddie nodded, before glancing around. “Where’s Legolas?”

“I told him to follow whoever took the book. Maybe we can still get our hands on it.”

“Mother—” Eddie scowled at him, reaching into his vest. “Gotta give me more credit than that.” The old man pulled out several blank sheets of paper.

“That’s…nice?”

“The list is on here, and we’re going to have to call Legolas back; he’s got a long run time, but it’s not semi-permanent like Buddy.”

“You didn’t use the engine?” Jeb asked.

“Why would you put a pair of two-stroke motors on a stealth craft?” Eddie asked, raising a brow. “No, I’ve been experimenting with lithium ion batteries. I used a silicon anode, upping the energy density drastically, but I haven’t got the tech to fix the growing SEI layer problem, so I just use my Myst to clean it out on Sundays, and that seems to work fine. One day, though, I’ll crack it.”

Jeb frowned. “You know there’s shrinking magic, right?” Jeb said, thinking back to the collectible he’d cannibalized to escape the Tutorial.

“Holy hell, why didn’t you tell me!?”

“‘Cuz we don’t have any on hand and I didn’t think of it.”

“How much shrinking!?” Eddie demanded.

“Football to pen-sized,” Jeb said, motioning.

“Hot damn!” Eddie shouted, his brush with death and prized drone all but forgotten. “I need to make some drafts!”

“Hold up there,” Jeb said, grabbing the roboticist by the shoulder before he went into a frenzy. “Papers,” he said, shaking the blank sheets in front of the old man’s face. “How do I read them?”

“Ugh, c’mere.” Eddie and Jeb went down into the basement, where the old man pulled out an airbrush and popped a mixture of ink and water into it.

“I isolated out the nonporous parts of the paper, so they should be more susceptible to osmosis,” he said as he prepped the mixture.

“Light, too,” Jeb said, holding up the paper to a bright light, where he could make out faint scribbles shining through the slightly less-dense portions of the paper.

“Gimmie,” Eddie said, snatching the paper out of his hand. Putting it over some printer paper, he coated them with an even spray of black ink.

Eddie waited for a moment, then pulled the two papers apart, revealing a crisp list of names, one side written in alien, the other in English.

“It looks like there was an orphan named Tim,” Jeb muttered, scanning the list. He couldn’t bring himself to find that fact amusing.

Eddie shooed him away and swiveled, rolling on his chair back to his drafting computer, muttering to himself.

Jeb hoofed the three pages of suspects up to Zlesk, who would presumably be able to put titles to names.

The injured keegan was sitting on a bench, enjoying the blazing hot summer sun while the kids played out front. It was a surreal sight, watching children jump five to ten feet in the air during tag.

“How’d it go?” he asked as Jeb approached. “I saw you and Eddie return unscathed, so I assumed it was at least a partial success.”

“We got the list,” Jeb said, putting the papers in the sheriff’s hands.

The keegan’s eyes went wide, watering as he scanned his way down the list.

“So many….” he said softly, flipping between the pages.

“This represents maybe a third of the governing body of Solmnath,” Zlesk said, glancing up at him. “These are old, powerful families. You’d have about as much luck taking them down as you would pulling the sun out of the sky.”

The sheriff put his palm over his forehead, taking a deep breath and staring into the ground.

“If it were five or six, you might be able to rally the rest of the nobility against them, ostracize them and cut away their support, but with this many complicit in this horrifying trade…”

“They’re gonna cover each other’s asses, aren’t they?” Jeb asked.

Zlesk nodded. “I would be tempted to take my pay and extricate