Forged: The Reforged Trilogy

By Erica Lindquist and Aron Christensen

Before Maeve and the crew of the Blue Phoenix make their desperate bid to reforge the galaxy, each of them were first forged themselves in the crucible of galactic events.

Forged includes four short stories that take place before Crucible of Stars and the rest of the Reforged Trilogy. Suggested order of reading is after Sword of Dreams in order to be familiar with all of the characters involved.

Purity: Maeve Cavainna was once a knight of Arcadia. How did she fall so far?

Little Hawk: A story of honor and childhood on Prianus. Originally published in Sword of Dreams.

Beauty By Night: An art thief seeks to recapture his humanity.

Songs and Sigils in Space: Tiberius hires a destitute fairy and the crew of the Blue Phoenix has a deadly – but profitable – encounter with the Nnyth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Loose Leaf Stories
• Release date: Oct 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781643190426

Book preview

ForgedTitle page

Copyright © 2013

Erica Lindquist & Aron Christensen

and Loose Leaf Stories

All rights reserved

ISBN: 9781643190426

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Cover art by Rowena Wang

Edited by John McClain and Amber Presley

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this book are either the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously.

Find more of our books at LLStories.com

CONTENTS

Purity

Little Hawk

Beauty By Night

Songs and Sigils in Space

Hammer of Time

1. Purity

Maeve crouched on the roof’s edge like an undersized white-winged gargoyle, watching the other Arcadians march back and forth far below. They held signs over their heads and waved them urgently at passing drivers. Maeve couldn’t read the words from her high perch, but knew them all by heart.

We want work, not worship!

Hyzaar is home!

Repeal the Purewater Act!

The protests had been going on for months now. Maeve had urged Gaelin to hold them anywhere else in Envollo. The city had plenty of other public locations, parks and plazas on every level of the towering arcology. But he insisted on city hall, where the sidewalk was wide and busy at the intersection of two major highways spiraling up from the endless blue ocean outside the city-spire. The air was fresh here and tasted of salt. Here, the protesters were too exposed, too public.

But Gaelin had only smiled at Maeve’s worry. That was the whole point, after all.

Hyzaari police in sleeveless black uniforms stood to one side and watched the Arcadians’ protest. Most kept their large, sun-bronzed hands on their shiny laser weapons. One of the officers – a woman who wore her dark hair in braids to secure it against the tug of the ocean wind – squinted up at Maeve’s perch.

Maeve twirled her spear between her hands. Colorful ribbons tied along its length flared like a dancer’s skirt and the blade – as long as her forearm and made of glittering glass, just like her armor – heliographed brilliantly in the light of Hyzaar’s triple suns. Maeve stopped toying with her spear and shaded her eyes. From her vantage point, she could see very little of Envollo. There was the courthouse to one side, all marble columns and carved promises of justice, and the blocky parking garage on the other. Salt crusted the gray concrete and left long white streaks when it rained. Across the road, the arcology’s exterior fell away in a long sheer drop to the unending blue waters that covered the whole planet. The ocean’s name was Hyzaar, so that was what the people here called their world.

What they called the Arcadians was less flattering: refugees and aliens, bird-backs and bums. Hyzaar had seemed like a good home for the Arcadians, but even with their long wings, they had to land somewhere on the watery world. They needed to eat and they needed jobs on a planet that didn’t have enough for their own people, much less two hundred thousand feathered interlopers.

Maeve stretched her wings up over her head, her shifting shoulders making the glass plates of her armor clink like crystal chimes. The Arcadians below marched nervously back and forth in front of the Envollo City Hall, a dome scaled in overlapping green tiles that had been stylish on Hyzaar thirty years before. Pedestrians and drivers slowed to watch the protestors. Some stopped to listen, but more ignored the Arcadians entirely and moved on.

A silver car with a sleek, sharkish design and no wheels raced down the street, riding low on its cloudy null-inertia field. It wove between other vehicles, decelerated suddenly and fishtailed to a crooked stop at the curb. The Arcadian protesters went still and Maeve’s fingers tightened on her spear.

Four long-limbed Hyzaari climbed from the car, each wearing a mask made of polished brown wood – precious and expensive on nearly landless Hyzaar – over their faces. The masks were eerily blank of any features. Their wearers spread out around the car, ominous presences silently pressing the Arcadians back. Those few Hyzaari they had been speaking to made quickly mumbled excuses and hasty exits.

Another man emerged from the low-slung silver car. He wore a clean, neat white suit below his blank wooden mask and his hands rested easily at his sides.

You’re not allowed to be here, he told the Arcadians. His voice echoed hollowly from behind the mask. You know that. The Purewater Act expressly forbids Arcadian gatherings.

Maeve didn’t know this man. Not his name or the face beneath the mask. There was one name that Maeve did know: Hulaan LiMarrin, the leader of the Purewater movement. But LiMarrin was a powerful man, far too important to deal with the Arcadians himself. No, for that he had people like this, men and women that hid their bigotry behind masks and self-righteous rage.

Maeve spread her wings and leapt, flying down to the street below. The Purewater man in the white suit seemed much as Maeve imagined LiMarrin would: large and imposing, with dark hair that lay flat along his skull in slick, smooth waves that were the same color as his mask. Maeve landed in front of him. Her glass armor threw back the light of three suns and the man took a step back, shielding his eyes with one bronzed hand.

This is not a religious gathering, Maeve said. Which is what your law forbids.

You’re protesting the law that controls your cult practices, answered the suited man. His eyes were deep gleams in the darkness of his wooden mask. "How is this anything but a religious gathering?"

We are not worshipping here, Maeve said. She shifted her spear from one hand to the other and pointed back to city hall. We only defend ourselves peacefully from an unjust law. A law purchased by Hulaan LiMarrin and the rest of the Purewater supporters.

"That we wrote. The Purewater man raised his voice to carry across the street. And which the people of Hyzaar voted to enact. But the Arcadians have no respect for our laws!"

Spectators murmured and looked at each other. The hiss and grumble of the sea below drowned out their words