Pressed, p.1
Pressed, page 1
Copyright © 2024 D. Hale Rambo
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.
Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.
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The Planar Page Logos by Grace Lewis
Planar Pages by Rick Hertel
Fiercewood Press
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Contents
The Book of Larrakane
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
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Author's Note
Glossary of The Planar Pages series
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Also by D. Hale Rambo
About the Author
Fiona wondered if there were worse ways to spend one’s evening than stalking the backwater floating isles of her home page, Restless Rise, waiting for the Painted Edge to show themselves. There were undoubtedly different ways, like crawling the pits of the page of earth, breaking under the weight of its immense gravity. Or searching the deep, dry deserts of Kerus without a splash of water or, worse yet, a safe pagemark to be found. But this truly had to take the cake. For one, it was raining. Not slightly. A downpour really. And two, she was pretending to be unseen, which was hard to do with a flirting faun alchemist and human pirate captain. After this stakeout Fiona vowed to treat herself to a warm bath with a cup of aggressively spiked coffee.
“Could you two please keep the romantics to a minimum?” Fiona waved her hand somewhat irritably at Gaili and Henrietta. “If I didn’t need one of you to be the face and another to be the eyes, I would’ve left you adoring each other at home.”
Gaili—blossom-pink curls, small black horns, and golden skin flashing in the soft moonlight—nodded quickly. “Sorry, Fi. We were talking about an upcoming trip and—”
“And I got carried away with it,” Henrietta finished in her deep but charming tenor. Her peachy cheeks reddened with a slight blush. She straightened the cuffs of her shirt. Though usually brighter dressed, Henrietta was in dark-brown clothes fit for flitting through the darkness. She cleared her throat, barely audible against the noise of fat raindrops hitting the muddy ground. “I’ll keep my thoughts to myself for the time being and focus. Apologies, mistress.”
Fiona stifled a sigh and nodded. She had to admit she was a touch irritated through no fault of the lovebirds. The few weeks between stopping the Court of Copper from being torn inside out to this evening had been riddled with too many things outside her control.
No one had seen or heard from Sadie the shape-changing hag in all that time. Her home on Restless Rise had been emptied, servants dismissed (although with glowing recommendations so as not to be disgruntled), and path unfound. Though the search for the three missing crowns had to continue, Fiona hadn’t the faintest idea of where to start with such a lead drying up. She could be anyone (well, human, faun, or centaur at least) and use them for anything. It made Fiona paranoid, not knowing if someone she was conversing with or passing on the street was Sadie. Mac had told her the only true way to know, without another fae-bond that would drain her, was by looking for the quirks pre-Inking faekin had. Mac, for example, needed to create a compulsion she channeled through her concoctions. In Sadie’s case they took the form of her fascination with alliteration and contests. In the game of clues, this sign was a small one. And so Fiona strained to understand the intent in every meeting and encounter she had. It was exhausting.
The Order of Seven had asked Fiona for her eyes and ears outside of the page. She agreed, of course, but noted nothing out of the ordinary across the Book. The Travel Guild looked for Sadie as well, to no avail, but Fiona knew they wouldn’t stop trying. Finding out one’s dead sister was alive wasn’t the sort of thing she expected Marcia, a Gilded leader and hidden hag herself, to give up.
Then the very public and very useless trial of the few captured Painted Edge members finally happened. The organization had stolen from the page of fire, almost destroying it; smuggled countless fire creatures out and tried to make illegal concoctions out of them; and then almost got away with it all, leaving the mess at the feet of the Travel Guild, the regulating force for most of the pages in the Book and overseers of the comings and goings of page turners.
And what did the smugglers get? Imprisonment in the Hinge, Guild headquarters. Removal from the public, yes, but they gave no further information about who started their organization or where the blasted airship they stole from Restless Rise was hiding. They insisted they took their orders anonymously, not meeting anyone else. And somehow anonymously all got the same exact blue-striped tattoo as well. Fiona shook her head thinking about their absurd answers again. Fiona had thought valuable information would’ve come from them—with the right pressure, of course—but Dodger had been able to gain nothing new, though his new promotion to Marbled at the Travel Guild had at least given Fiona a spot at the trial.
Denizens from the page of fire were there. She had tried talking to the few she saw, but they could give her no answers except that everything seemed to be, well, aflame. They hadn’t been entirely clear and her Claire, language of the flame, was a tad poor. She wished Gaili could’ve been there with her flawless pronunciation to translate. The faun had fast become busy with not only her bustling shop but also with helping Fiona on the minor cases that new fame had sent her way, and with her burgeoning relationship with Henrietta and Matteo. It was Henrietta, visiting at their shared home once again, who came through with new information. Her associate smuggler who had been working with the Painted Edge had popped back up. Henrietta made some polite inquiries about work, suggesting that cocoa and coffee smuggling was no longer her main job, and procured an invitation to a Painted Edge recruitment meeting. Fiona had been most impressed with the captain’s quick thinking. That the contact didn’t know Henrietta was friends with an investigator Fiona counted as a massive win.
As she had come to learn, many people knew her face from the blasted Card, a news pamphlet printed and distributed all over the Book. Though requests for her to work on cases had gone up from the accidental promotion, so had her name and figure. She had to take to wearing her hair differently, more like the other human page turners of Rise, with her brown curls swept up into a bun and covered with elaborate fabric and netted cord. And her multi-pocketed, multi-page scarf had become more hidden as well, although not completely out of reach. It was becoming too well known. Sadie’s questions about its abilities to reach the dark edge were never far from her mind. No, it had become time to keep it near but quiet, lest she be robbed of it again.
But it all meant she had to rely on friends, clever, loyal friends, to surveil with her. If she could catch the Painted Edge out, then she would have at least one problematic entity in the Book dealt with and could close the case on them for good. And her friends had been great watchers, at least for the first few hours. But people got bored. That was the problem. And unlike Fiona, they didn’t know how to self-entertain with curiosity.
“I find it odd that the PE would setup a hideout here to meet,” Fiona murmured. She wrinkled her nose. “There are better, less populated places. Smallcrest for one, though it is at Plateau height, so too easily spotted perhaps.” The Plateau, a massive flat land in the center of the world, rotated every season like clockwork. Surrounding this restless rise were more than a dozen floating islands at various elevation levels. Nothing too high above or too far below of course. Even the lowest floating islands stayed well above the thick clouds roiling below them all.
“It’s so far away from a safe pagemark. Larrakane knows, rippers like them have used unsafe pagemarks before, but so routinely? And it is right on the edge of Woolring. I mean, wouldn’t it be quite obvious to the sheep farmers when a group of people springs out of nowhere? There’s only so many of them.” She kept her eyes focused on the field in front of her. Mixed grasses and clumps of rock were most of what this land had to offer—though she suspected with this amount of rain it would offer even less to those who worked it for a while.
There was a scraggly tree every few feet or so and one dilapidated barn but not what one would call great cover. That they expected to have a meeting here and invited a new recruit meant they probably felt very safe here though. It made sense that whatever they came to talk about would be very juicy to hear.
“I don’t know if anyone can see anything in this rain,” Henrietta replied, pulling a lightly dripping curl of gray-tinged strawberry hair from her eyes. “We’re luc ky my dear Gaili’s clever enough to pop a water canopy for us, or we’d be soaked through ourselves.”
Gaili had devised a way to use a jar of trapped air from the winds of Mistral and oil from duck feathers (a creature too common to the Rise) to create an invisible, weightless canopy that repelled the rain. Well, for a time. Though the air was let out at a measured rate, the heaviness or longevity of the downpour could see it spent long before its hour of use. Gaili gripped the jar and the long-stemmed contraption she had built that attached to it with a steady tattooed hand. She kept her other firmly on the ground to hold her balance. Though her right hand had almost healed from the rapid aging it experienced dealing with Clara—it was only mildly wrinkled now—Gaili still favored her undamaged hand for precise work.
Fiona nodded. “That is fair. It’s simply not the best plan I think.” She pulled her cloak tighter against herself as the rain continued to pour around them. The water canopy carefully covered them from the deluge, but it did nothing for the cold. It should’ve been a warm summer night in Rise. Not this wet, cold mess that had been happening more frequently. It wasn’t quite the season for rain, but the weather didn’t seem to acknowledge that. Rise had reported to the Travel Guild much flooding and the beginning destruction of some crops because of all the rain. It was unfortunate that no one in the Book had the power to control the weather.
“There’s not a lot of big thinkers in smuggling and thieving,” Henrietta said, pulling out a small dark leather-bound flask. “You have a leader who is the brains and then a bunch of arms to move goods about. Sure, you might come across a few with more lightning in their head than the rest, but when you find one, you get them closer to you.”
“For better planning?”
“Easier to watch.” Henrietta tipped her flask for a swig. “Larrakane bless, I’d settle for just a ship in Rise and one outside of it. I could run more coffee and cocoa than even the Queen’s shippers. And if I could move Big Betty between the pages as they can, it would make all the difference. Completely change the game.”
“Have you ever tried it?” Fiona had never thought to ask before.
“Of course, but it’s not feasible. You’d have to have page turners to work the transport every time, and you lot can’t stay away from Spine long enough to keep on the move. What’s more, I don’t know any ship that can make it through a page turn fast enough. They’re big and bulky. And you’d have to make sure everyone was working together in congruence with the turn. Hard enough to get a crew working together just to sail the blasted thing. I trust mine to know what they’re doing, but sailing across a page? That frightened even the heartiest of ’em.”
“But if you couldn’t get it in one go, how did you get Big Betty to Mistral at all?” Gaili asked, brow furrowing.
Henrietta snorted. “Bit by bit, ’course.”
There was a crackle of thunder as the field and scraggly trees peeled away some distance from them to reveal a darkened forest. No light broke through the sky and the large trunks seemed to take up the entirety of the background. Fiona squinted. How deep in the forests of Spine were they coming from? A small group of people strode clustered together. The page closed up behind them. Fiona was startled to realize the group all had visible weapons that stood out in the soft moonlight. She had never seen so many, except for groups of jackets, and they kept theirs carefully concealed so as not to be out of place among people as they covered the pages. The Painted Edge weren’t just smugglers and rippers. They were deadly.
“Looks like I’m up,” Henrietta said, getting to her feet with a light groan. She patted Gaili’s hand, readjusted her rapier at her belt so it was showing, and then slipped out of the shadows and toward the group with a confident swagger.
Fiona slunk back away from the area, tugging Gaili along with her. If the Painted Edge had any sense, they’d scout before conducting their clandestine meeting. She certainly had, walking the rundown barn in the distance that was probably where they’d huddle up to chat. Or perhaps the downpour of rain made them confident no one was lurking around. No one sensible would be outside in this mess.
They stopped when Fiona felt they were comfortably away to whisper. The figures in the distance moved, gathering as Henrietta approached. They had agreed that she would give Henrietta some time to initiate herself. If it seemed as if the group were going to travel, turn the page somewhere else, or anything beyond talk, Fiona would follow. There was no telling what the Painted Edge might do if they caught them. The whole organization was wrapped in shadow and secrecy. It was doubtful they’d be set free. Fighting their way out was not a strong suit of Fiona’s. And no matter what her mother had said of her propensity to natter on like a daft hen, she doubted she could talk their way out of a situation with that many people.
“Gaili, what details can you make out?” The faun’s eyes were much better in the darkness than her human ones.
“There are quite a few people, long-haired and darkly clothed,” Gaili whispered. She shook her head. “They seem more ragged than I expected.”
Fiona smirked. “I don’t think most thieves carry on with the latest fashion while they sneak around.”
“Still, they could have a little pride in their look. Matching cloaks for one,” Gaili said, sniffing. Faekin did always think the other mortal beings in the Book could up their fashion game to match theirs.
Fiona didn’t have the heart to tell her that no one could possibly beat the denizens of the Court of Copper when it came to fashion or their amazing abilities. The page was simply more advanced than the humans of Restless Rise or the anthropomorphized animals of Kerus. “Are there any smilodons or elephas?” Fiona couldn’t imagine any of the peaceful sects of elephas being involved in the group, but without knowing their motives, she wouldn’t count anyone out.
The faun shook her head. “Just humans as far as I can tell. You think it’s to put Henrietta at ease?”
“More so anyone who may come upon them will have fewer questions, I think. This is far from a touristy area.”
“They’re moving into the barn with her.” Gaili’s voice pitched.
“That’s our cue to follow.” Fiona rose from the ground and brushed mud off her thick black wool stockings. She had been prepared to run, jaunt, or climb at a moment’s notice. She would not walk away from this opportunity without knowing something valuable. If their lives were going to be at stake, it should count for something. “Remember, stay ten steps behind me and to the right. When I stop, make the noise.” Though she didn’t want to put Gaili in danger, she knew there was little chance the faun would leave her and Henrietta out here alone. Gaili could take care of herself and turn the page back to Spine if needed. It was Henrietta who was the sitting duck with the inability to leave this page should she have to.
Fiona silently strode from beneath the water canopy into the pouring rain. The sodding rain beat the muddy ground in a rhythmic pattern, helping cover her footsteps as a lucky bonus. She had traded her usual Kerus slippers for the knee-high boots of her kin that would make it easier to traverse the muddy ground. The woman on guard at the abandoned barn seemed rapt with attention. Unlucky for Fiona. With no close trees to slink behind and the short grass unable to hide her crouching form, Fiona stopped. She flapped her hand, giving Gaili’s sure-sighted faekin eyes the signal.
A loud noise, like a wild creature, beckoned farther afield. Though Fiona had known Gaili was talented in linguistics, she hadn’t imagined she could mimic the sounds of fire creatures as well as she did. The hissing and sputtering sounded very lifelike. But the guard’s attention was captured. The woman raised her crossbow and stepped off in the direction of the noise.
With a brief glance in that direction, Fiona skirted toward the barn. Soft lantern lights glowed from the glassless windows. Approaching the wooden exterior, she crouched and made her way to the back of the building. So far so good. She craned her neck to peer into the barn.
As she suspected, most of the group were seated on rusted crates and stools. Some lounged on the dry packed earth. Henrietta stood nonchalantly in the back with her contact, as if she had no further questions and belonged there. She kept a loose hand on the hilt of her rapier and leaned in, grinning at whatever her contact was saying to her. Fiona was impressed with her ability to blend in so quickly with the group of rippers. Though she was by far the oldest there, she was clearly experienced. Eyes kept flicking toward the door as if they were waiting for someone. Some paced. Few were talking.
