Page 22 of Phoenix Chosen 2

“That’s upside down,” Tyler snorts, then flips them over on my face.

“What is this called?” I ask.

“Sunglasses. They’ll help disguise you. Remember… there are eyes everywhere in my world, always watching and always listening. You’ve gotta be careful about that.”

“What do you have in the way of weapons?” I ask. “I’m naked without a blade on me.”

“Unfortunately, you’re gonna have to get used to feeling naked,” he says as he slips his arm around my waist and kisses my cheek.

“Really? Nothing?”

“My weapon at work was a heavy-ass flashlight and a can of mace.”

“A mace sounds perfect.”

“No, no, notamace. Mace. It’s like a defense spray.”

“I see. Like a squid’s ink?”

“Uh, sure. Like a spicy squid.” Tyler opens his drawer and gets out a small pouch made of hard leather. “Here. You can have this pocket knife. Though you could hardly call it a knife compared to what you’re used to…”

I open the clasp on the pouch. Inside is an object about the length of my palm that appears to be crafted out of a red stone paired with steel. It is incredibly light. Tyler takes it from me and, using his fingernail, flips out a thin blade from its side.

“Amazing,” I say, trying it myself. “This is incredible!”

Tyler’s face brightens. “There’s more too, like, uh… This one is a bottle opener. This one is a screwdriver. And here are scissors.”

As Tyler would say, my mind is blown. I’ve seen delicate metalwork, but nothing like this.

“This is a king’s gift. I don’t deserve this.”

“Oh, yes you do,” he says, closing my hand around the knife. “I bought this thing for nine dollars at Wal-Mart and you deserve every single cent of it.”

“I would like to wear it close to my chest,” I say. “So I can access it easily if I have to.”

He digs through his things and finds a boot, from which he removes the laces. “Uh… here. How about this?”

I cut the cord to size with the knife, then braid it into a necklace connected to the leather pouch. Tucked safely against my chest beneath the tee shirt, the weight of the small package brings me a sense of comfort. I’m ready.

I wasn’t ready for this at all.

We enter one of the giant roaring kah beasts called abaz, and its belly is filled up with people. Tyler takes my hand and leads me through the crowd of sullen-faced passengers like I’m a helpless blind man in danger of getting plucked of all mydrachmae. I suppose that’s exactly what I am here, and I don’t like it one bit.

With a pained roar, the smelly beast lurches forward. I’m thrown off balance and nearly smash an old man in the face with my elbow. Tyler pulls me along, and we fall onto a pair of hard chairs. It seems that everyone around us is holding one of those glow stones, and they are completely entranced by them. No one is paying attention to anything or anyone else. No wonder Tyler was so helpless when he arrived in Circeana. It turns out I’m no blind man at all. Even the most unskilled Athenosian thief could empty the purses of just about every person here.

Through the scratched and cloudy window, the world rushes past us at startling speed. The smaller kah beasts swirl around us like a school of fish, constantly flitting back and forth, nearly colliding with us. It’s a chaotic dance that I have to turn my eyes away from, for I’m in danger of embarrassing myself with a startled shout. How we’ve managed to not collide and destroy everything in our path seems to be some miracle of the Gods.

Passengers leave and more enter. A man standing next to us looks at me, and I stare back at him from behind my dark eye mask. He seems to have little white snails in his ears. Many people do. Very odd.

“What are those?” I ask Tyler. “Is it jewelry, or a parasite?”

Tyler looks and laughs. “Those are earbuds.”

I wrinkle my nose. Ear bud? Some kind of fungus?

Then I notice a little face peeking at me from between the chairs in front of me. I tilt my head to look. The little girl doesthe same, and then waves. I smile. It seems some things don’t change, no matter what world you’re in.

No one else is paying attention. I discreetly show her my hand, then with a flourish of my fingers, grasp a red feather out of the air. Her eyes widen. I shake the feather, and it vanishes with a poof of sparks. She shakes her mother’s arm.

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