“Did you or did you not communicate classified operational information outside of sanctioned channels?” Glenbark asked, as if he hadn’t spoken at all.
And that’s when it hit me. Something about the way Auckus was staring at me, and the tickle of intuition that’d been nagging in the background since Johnny and I had escaped our first tavern brawl this morning to the tune of the High Cleric’s sudden declaration of war mere hours later.
How had the WAN even known I was in the slums at all?
I’d assumed someone might’ve recognized Elise or Four from the reels, or might’ve even spotted the 51st Hounds, put two and two together, and made a lucky guess. I’d even bounced around a few hare-brained theories involving advanced scanners, telepathic spies, and Alton Parker’s devious games.
But the much simpler explanation was that someone had simply told them where to find me.
“Sanctioned channels,” Auckus practically spat, finally tearing his gaze away from me and back to Glenbark. “Sanctioned like this abomination of a meeting? Tell me, what worth are sanctioned channels when our own High General sits council with demons and civilians?”
“Check the records, Gregor,” Hopper said. “There’s not a single person here without the proper security clearance, civilian or otherwise.”
Auckus showed him a snarl that might’ve made a wolf envious.
“The legality of this meeting is not currently in question,” Glenbark said before he could actually speak—or bite. “General Auckus, did you or did you not communicate classified operational information outside of sanctioned channels?”
Auckus looked back and forth between her and Hopper before finally settling on me. “You’ve snuck into both of their minds, haven’t you, Demon? Crawled right in and—”
“Answer the question, Gregor,” Glenbark said.
He crossed his arms. “No. I will not. I will not stand trial in the presence of four established telepaths.”
“You are not being offered the choice.”
“No?” A slow, scud-eating grin stretched Auckus’ mouth. “Then I call for an emergency meeting of the high command.”
The slimy bastard.
Not that I hadn’t already known that about him. In addition to being a crusty curmudgeon and an alleged womanizer, Gregor Auckus had also smuggled one of the Seekers, Siren, on base to fulfill her Sanctum orders to kill me during my post-Humility stay in the medica—the first of the two back-stabbings to which Glenbark had referred a minute ago.
He was a fully certified pain in our asses, that was for sure. But for him to resort to abusing the protocols and calling an emergency meeting just to get us out of the room…
His slimy bastard smile only grew as he took in Hopper’s surprised look and Glenbark’s resolutely blank one.
“You understand this does not excuse you from the current line of inquiry?” Glenbark asked.
Auckus raised an eyebrow, unperturbed. “Do you deny my right to call this meeting?”
“Of course not.” Glenbark watched him for a few moments as if expecting he might rethink his childish move, then finally gave up and turned to us. “Very well. I’m going to have to ask you all to cede the room for an emergency convening of the high command.”
We all exchanged a look, and rose from the table. Dillard and the two captains looked almost as discombobulated as the rest of us. Johnny and Hopper’s twitchy servitor both hopped to Glenbark’s order to put out word to the remaining ten generals. The rest of us drifted toward the door until Glenbark turned to address us.
“If you could all wait outside, I’d like to finish our discussion afterward. This shouldn’t take long,” she added, with a meaningful look at General Auckus.
He ignored her, turning to shoot one last disdainful look at me and Elise.
“Do be careful out there, Demon,” he said. “I’m told there’s a war coming.”
I held his venomous gaze, wanting to say something, to show him I wasn’t afraid. Except I was. I could’ve broken the crusty old man like so many twigs, and yet in that moment, I felt more powerless than I could explain. Because what good would breaking him do? What good could I do at all?
The ball was already rolling. And it was a damn big one.
Glenbark caught my eye and gently gestured for me to step outside. I turned for the door, trying to reassure myself that Gregor Auckus was about to get what was coming to him. No matter how hard I tried, though, I couldn’t quite ignore the sinking feeling that the slimy bastard had somehow just gotten exactly what he’d wanted all along.
7
Public Opinion
I refreshed my tablet for what must’ve been the hundredth time in the past fifteen minutes. Nothing. Well, not unless you counted the flood of replays and breakdowns of the High Cleric’s impromptu confession and declaration of war. But no sign yet of the stories I was waiting for.
At least the High Cleric’s bold performance had almost pushed my name—or the Demon of Divinity’s—out of the day’s top headlines. Almost. There were still a couple pieces about the mess in the tavern that morning, of course, but whatever. Small victories.
“Stop brooding and come hold me,” Elise mumbled sleepily from the bundle of blankets beside me.
I set the tablet aside, unable to hold back a small smile despite everything. It never ceased to amaze me how, with just a few words, sometimes even with just her presence alone, Elise could simply yank me away from the darkness and straight to a place where I was floating at peace.
“I wasn’t brooding,” I said, burrowing in next to her and pulling her close. “Just waiting for Glenbark’s statement to go live.”
Elise made a noncommittal noise and snuggled into me.
“Besides,” I added, “since when are you the one who needs to be held?”
“Maybe I’m scared,” she said in what might’ve been a playful tone.
I stroked her hair, thinking. “Are you?”
She tilted her head a few inches to study me, and it wasn’t playfulness I saw in her eyes. “We should probably figure out exactly what you’re gonna say tomorrow.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were worried I was gonna mess this thing up.”
“Well…” She kissed my cheek and sat up. “It’s a very mess-upable situation.”
I frowned up at those beautiful blue eyes. “If this is supposed to be a pep talk…”
She smiled down at me and gave me a firm pat on the leg. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“I thought I was holding you,” I groaned. “Can’t we just be happy we won today?”
She paused halfway out of bed to arch an eyebrow at me. “We both had multiple attempts made on our lives, and the High Cleric gave the go-ahead for all of Enochia to take another shot tomorrow. You call that a win?”
I shrugged, not really sure how to counter the point—even if Gregor Auckus had been discharged for insubordination, with immediate effect, during the high council’s emergency meeting earlier that day.
“At least Auckus is gone,” I finally said, but my voice sounded deflated even to my own ears.
The slimy bastard, I didn’t add.
“Gone for now,” Elise corrected me. “But I didn’t like the look that slimy bastard gave us when he—What? Why are you smiling like that?”
“I just love you. That’s all.” The smile slid from my face as my thoughts turned from Elise’s perfect choice of words back to Auckus himself. “But yeah, I didn’t like it either.”
“He still has too many connections here,” Elise said, rising to pace the room. She didn’t elaborate, but I understood just fine. I shared the same worries.
Summary Legion discharge or no, the day’s “victory” might have come as more of a relief if the multiple counts of treason had actually managed to stick to Auckus alongside the charges of insubordination. Whether or not Gregor Auckus actually deserved to hang for what he’d done, as would’ve been the case for a condemned traitor, I couldn’t say. But it har
dly mattered now. He’d wiggled free from those charges on some bullscud technicalities. Not that I was surprised by that part. Honestly, I hadn’t even thought to hope he would be discharged at all. The last time a general had been discharged—with the exception of Adrian Kublich, posthumously—had been well before I was born.
It was a big deal.
But even as relieved as I was, knowing Auckus wouldn’t be readily able to sabotage our plans anymore, at this point, it was really only good news in the way that a dingy, hole-riddled raft would’ve been good news in the middle of a raging sea storm. Sure, it was something to hold on to. But it hardly meant you were safe from drowning.
From what little Glenbark had told us, the generals of high command had been furious about the entire incident. Auckus had been far from the most popular of their rank, but he’d also been general for a long time. He had allies among the twelve, and even if he hadn’t, none of them were happy to see a general of the Legion brought to shame. I doubted they would have agreed to a full discharge if there’d been any choice—especially not when at least half of them probably privately thought his actions justified.
Glenbark hadn’t said as much publicly, but I had a feeling General Hopper was in the minority by supporting her in her decision to draw a line and stand up to the Sanctum on the issue of Shaper genocide.
All that to say, the remainder of our war-room talk with Glenbark and the others had been rather grim following Auckus’ heated departure.
As Franco had pointed out, aside from the defensive route of clearing up the facts and playing public relations for Shapers like me, the other option was pretty much limited to reminding the public that all law-abiding Enochians were sworn to be protected under Legion law—regardless of what the Sanctum said—and that genocide was explicitly not okay. Which probably should’ve gone without saying. But seeing as it apparently hadn’t, there was really only one other option, short of storming the White Tower and pulling a full military coup of the planet.
If it was to be a war of truths and public opinions, the only other option was to attack the authority of the Sanctum and the High Cleric himself.
And that had been about all the further we got before the meeting had fallen to pieces. One of the captains had stood and stiffly requested to be removed from the small council, even should it be on pain of death or discharge. The rest of the room hadn’t been much better. And even after everything, I wasn’t sure I could blame them. I still couldn’t help but wonder if my dad wouldn’t have said the same thing. Scud, even after they’d made multiple attempts on my life, it still made me uncomfortable even thinking about publicly speaking out against the Sanctum.
They had a word for that kind of thing. Blasphemy.
I think it had been the first time I’d ever seen Glenbark’s face betray real uncertainty, as she’d sat there, mulling over the situation. Finally, though, she’d invited the captain sit, and had drawn her own line in the sand.
“I assure you,” she’d said, “there will be no smear campaign against the Sanctum. We will not fight dirty. But so long as this Legion is mine to command, nor will we ever willingly turn away from hard facts, even if those facts may be damaging to that which we hold dearest in our hearts. Our duty is to Enochia, to justice, and to Alpha—not to the Sanctum. The last two are not inseparable, no matter how much we might wish to believe it so.”
I hadn’t missed the look Franco had shot me at the part about never willingly turning away from hard facts. I hadn’t needed to ask him what he was thinking, either, because I was pretty sure it was exactly what I’d been thinking about from the moment he’d first mentioned attacking the Sanctum’s credibility: the ancient image we’d seen of the holy prophet Sarentus, facing down the last of the Emmútari, his eyes drawn in crimson that, even faded with age, all too closely resembled the eyes of a raknoth. The image that implied, however tenuously, that the entire gropping Sanctum might’ve been built on more than just the still-burning ashes of the ancient Emmútari peacekeepers.
It was ludicrous to think. Utterly ridiculous. So much so that neither of us had told anyone but Elise about the picture since having been captured back in Humility. Regardless, it was outside the scope of the plan at this point anyway. Glenbark had called a wrap on the meeting shortly after we’d hit our little existential snag. This evening, she would release a public statement to calm the waters—or to hopefully at least keep them from boiling into the streets tonight, thick with the blood of innocents. Tomorrow, I was to get in front of a camera and play nice.
Of course, none of us expected the WAN would be rushing to send over a friendly interviewer, but Franco had had an answer for that as well.
Barbara Sanders.
Barbara was one of Divinity’s most beloved field reporters—the type of inquisitive but kind spirit who could deliver even the grimmest of stories with a gentle touch of dignity. She was also, as one of the captains had skeptically pointed out, a longtime associate of the WAN, which meant taking this job might well mean career suicide for her now that the High Cleric had declared war. Franco, though, had been sure that Barbara would be in. And he hadn’t been wrong.
Barbara had jumped on the interview invitation with frightening speed.
I wasn’t all that surprised. She’d been relentlessly trying to get my full story ever since we’d crossed paths at the White Tower, where she’d more than earned the right to hear it. Because that was the one part no one but us ex-renegades knew about that awful day: Barbara Sanders had saved my life at the Sanctum gallows.
But instead of taking her up on her generous offer to sit down with me and set the record straight for Enochia when it might’ve actually done some good, I’d spent the next cycles wallowing in a dark corner over the loss of Carlisle and my parents, right up until guilt and the resurgence of the hybrid army had jolted me into the action that’d seen my reputation burning, bit by controversial bit. Ignoring Barbara’s standing offer all the while. Convinced I was dealing with the real threats. Outraged that the rest of the world couldn’t see it that way, when really…
“I really gropped this up, huh?”
Elise paused in her pacing to look at me. “What do you mean?”
“Just… all of it,” I said, not really sure how to encompass the entirety of what I was feeling.
Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe I’d already sat in my corner for too long, not bothering to do anything but fume as I’d been demonized again and again. At this point, I wasn’t sure half of Enochia wouldn’t simply power down their displays the moment I showed up and opened my mouth. But we had to try something, right?
Elise came and sat beside me, taking my hand in hers. “I think you need to give credit where it’s due. It took a whole planet working together to grop things up this bad. We just need to remind the world that, at the end of the day, we all want the same thing, more or less.”
I looked at her and wondered—not for the first time—if she shouldn’t be the one to do this whole interview dance. I understood why Glenbark and the others thought it was best to start with me. I was the two-thousand pound haga beast in the room, so to speak—the dark hooded figure who had to be properly unshrouded before any of the Alpha-fearing people out there would even think twice about accepting the Shapers of Enochia as anything but the kin of the terrible Demon of Divinity.
They needed to see that even the worst of us could be good and kind.
Then again, if we wanted to put an empathetic face on the world of Shaping, I was also pretty sure we’d be hard-pressed to find a better face than Elise’s. She was beautiful. Brilliant. Immediately likeable. More importantly, she was not me. She was better than me.
All that said, though, I also couldn’t ignore the fact that putting her in the public spotlight in my place would effectively be the same as painting a few million Alpha-fearing crosshairs straight on her forehead. And grop that.
“I still think it’s kind of silly,” I finally said, “letting our hopes and futures ride
on a gropping interview.”
“Sillier than letting it all ride on a blade or a few choice slugs, you mean?”
And there was that charming wit that made her ten times better equipped than me for this kind of thing.
“Is it too late for us to just run away together?” I asked, stroking her cheek.
She stood, smiling, and tugged at my hand. “Come on, flyboy. We’ve got some empathy to go digging for.”
Her smile was contagious, and this time I didn’t resist. She pulled me into the living room, and we sat down to search for some usable scrap of the respectable, perhaps even charming tyro I’d once been, and to get that shiny veneer ready for the cameras.
It wasn’t exactly how I’d ever imagined the push for Shaper liberty might begin, but I guess it wasn’t such a bad start, either. Barbara Sanders, beloved reporter, was on board. General Auckus, miserable treacherous bastard, was sacked. And Elise was right here, looking at me as if she truly believed I could be redeemed in the public eye.
Brewing war aside, it seemed things were actually starting to look up.
At least until I saw the reels the next morning.
8
The Scoop
“Haldin?”
I snapped out of my reverie to find Barbara Sanders watching me with keen brown eyes. We sat facing each other across a low lounge table, stocked with two steaming cups of caffa. As if that little detail could force the weight from the air and settle this entire affair back down to a casual chat between two… not friends. Two people. Interviewer and interviewee. Barbara had specifically made as much clear upon her hasty arrival that morning, not because she actually felt unfriendly toward me—quite the opposite, in fact—but simply because she wanted this interview to be taken seriously.
And that, she had warned, meant she was going to have to press me at times.
“I sure hope I’m not boring you…”
From many other people, the words could have easily been a backhanded slight, but coming from Barbara and her genuine if restrained smile, it only sounded like a kindly jest.
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