Elise was stronger than me.
One moment, we were hanging there in the bittersweet telepathic abyss, and then the next, she was gone, and I was alone with Burton Kovaks, slogging through the dark, winding ways.
Luckily, our trek back through the maze of tunnels was as silent as it was uneventful. I don’t think I could’ve stomached anything other than the silence right then, with the ghost of Elise’s kiss hanging on my lips, and the colossal shadow of my next challenge looming ahead of me, inescapable.
It wasn’t until Kovaks drew to a halt in front of me that I realized we’d made it back to the hidden door behind the Dark Star Tavern. Kovaks was watching me in the glow of our lights, his hand frozen halfway to the key stone activation rune, like he’d fully intended to boot me out the door without a word, but had lost the battle against his own infernal curiosity.
“Why are you doing this, kid?” he finally asked, lowering the stone and turning to face me like it was all my fault.
“I guess I feel like it’s the only way left to help.”
The words came out without my really thinking about them—not that I could’ve found the mental space to think of much else to say if I’d tried. At any rate, the answer seemed to suffice.
Kovaks pondered my words for a few moments, then turned back to the rune-gilded wall, opting to keep whatever thoughts he had to himself. I didn’t worry about it. Guess I was lacking the mental space for that, too. In fact, aside from Elise and the shadow of what lay ahead, the only thing that remained in my mind, as Kovaks pressed his key stone to the door runes, was the fact that Garrett and Siren weren’t with us.
They’d remained behind with the Children of Enochia. Had been free to do so, as far as I could tell. The details had been frustratingly scant. Kovaks hadn’t said much when they’d finally emerged from the room where they’d gone to administer their Judge to the two ex-Seekers. None of them had said much, for that matter. I’d only gathered that Garrett and Siren had been tested, and that they apparently weren’t to be thrown out like a pair of feral, dark-spirited wolves. Not like me.
That, more than anything, chilled me to the bone.
Maybe I should’ve been glad. I’d never intended for the two ex-Seekers to accompany me on the next leg of this journey, after all. Besides, unquestionably dark pasts and rough edges aside, they were both adept Shapers, and fairly charismatic to boot, when they put their minds to it. If they truly intended to help the cause, I wasn’t sure Elise and Kovaks and the others were going to be finding many more vastly superior candidates among the long-hunted dregs of Shaper kind.
That said, I was still a little hung up on the fact that two honest-to-Alpha murderers had apparently managed to pass the test that I’d so spectacularly failed.
If taking human lives in cold blood wasn’t enough to rule someone out in the arcane eyes of the Judge, then where the scud did that leave me?
I’d thought about asking. About the Judge itself. About Nala’s talk of blue-blue-reds, and what in the scud this divine test of theirs was even testing at all. I’d thought about it a lot. So much so that I’d probably missed half of what’d been said in the past couple hours.
In the end, though, I hadn’t asked. Mostly because I figured I’d have only gotten more vague non-answers from them. Or so I’d told myself at the time. Now, though, if I was being completely honest with myself, I couldn’t quite ignore the idea that it hadn’t been a lack of answers holding me back, but rather the fear that I might learn the honest truth.
Whatever that arcane helmet had seen inside of me, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. And given the way Burton Kovaks was staring at me as I came back to the present, it seemed more than a little unlikely I was missing out on anything good.
I stepped out to join him in the still shadows of the Dark Star Tavern’s alleyway, wondering one last time if I shouldn’t demand some answers anyway.
“You sure you’ll figure out how to use that thing?” he asked before I could, gesturing to the rucksack slung over my shoulder.
I shrugged. “Guess I’ll have to.”
There wasn’t really anything more to be said about it. Not now. And least of all to Burton Kovaks.
He seemed to feel the same way.
“Well,” he said, “don’t grop this up.” Then he turned and disappeared back into the dark passageway, swinging the rectangular patch of permacrete closed behind him.
I watched with some interest as the door blended back into the wall—not just by mere illusion and tight engineering, as far as I could tell in my senses, but rather by actually physically weaving itself back into a cohesive whole.
It was damn impressive runework, to say the least. Especially when considering it must’ve been laid down by Shapers now several centuries beyond the pyre. As far as I’d come with my own abilities, my head spun just trying to imagine how I’d even begin the task of arranging and empowering the runes to pull off something that complicated. And that wasn’t even to mention the rest of the ancient Emmútari tech lying around in there—knockout wands, next-level cloaking fields, that thrice-damned Judge, and Alpha only knew what else.
I couldn’t even imagine how many lifetimes of collective work had gone into crafting such things. And, lucky for me, I’d probably never find out, either. Not until I purged my blackened spirit in the eyes of the Judge, at least.
That cheery thought brought me back to the dark alleyway, where I was alone, and starting to get a little cold.
“Well?” came Alton Parker’s smooth baritone, even as I reached out to begin searching for his presence.
Not quite alone after all, then.
Parker was right where I’d left him. Literally. As far as I could tell, the raknoth hadn’t moved an inch from his rooftop perch.
Worse, I realized, I was actually relieved by that fact.
Because at least I wasn’t the only freak in this outfit. And also because, like it or not—and I didn’t, not one bit—I needed the slimy bastard to pull this off.
And that was the other part that chilled me to the bone.
“I’ve got something that should work,” I sent back, wishing more than anything that I could simply curl up under a thick blanket with Elise, and never think another troubling thought again.
“Should?” Parker asked.
I shrugged, even though I could feel he didn’t have a line of sight on me. “It’s probably been a thousand years since anyone used this thing. There might be a little troubleshooting involved.”
And that might’ve been the understatement of the millennium, too. But we wouldn’t know until we tried.
“Very well.” Parker’s dark outline appeared at the edge of the rooftop like a wraith in the night. “We’d best get outside the city limits, then. I’ll call the ship.”
An hour or so of sneaking, a few inhuman acrobatics, and a covert countryside pickup later, we’d made it back to the ship and safely into orbit, where I was finally free to kick back and start worrying about the next part properly.
A few hours after that, we’d managed—with only a few choice insults back and forth—to establish some passable operation of the souvenir Kovaks and Omelius had agreed to leave to me, almost as reluctantly as they’d agreed it was probably for the good of everyone. And only then because I’d had Franco and Elise arguing my case. I’m not sure what I would’ve done otherwise. Though I also wasn’t sure why, out of everything in their arcane arsenal, Kovaks and Omelius had been so hesitant to give me this one.
It was a weapon of truth, after all. Not exactly the kind of thing a vile demon should seemingly have much use for.
Which only made it that much more deliciously rich that it was Alton Parker, of all creatures, who was most effectively equipped to wield the thing against the High Cleric and against his holy vendetta against all of Shaper kind.
Maybe the world truly had gone crazy.
“You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?” I asked quietly, as I tucked the arcane headpiec
e back into the rucksack and Alton began the task of bringing us down from orbit. “You knew from the moment you showed me the rakul. Even before then.”
Alton studied me for a stretch before answering, maybe debating the same thing himself, maybe just deciding how extensively to twist the truth to suit his narrative.
“You’ve been damned in their eyes ever since the WAN reels pronounced you back from the dead and branded you a terrorist,” he finally said. “There is no coming back from that. Not ever. Not truly. Even if you’d been a unanimously shining paragon of good. Even if the High Cleric himself had blessed you, declared you Alpha’s Chosen. Somewhere deep down, you know there always would’ve lived a shadow of fear in the heart of the people.”
He was right, of course. I understood that now. And what was even worse, was that he’d somehow picked up on exactly what I’d been asking, possibly more clearly than I’d known myself.
“You say that like it’s all said and done already.”
“Well, if it wasn’t before...” He nodded toward the rest of our cobbled-together recording rig, as if to ask how I could ever expect to be forgiven for what we were about to attempt. Which was a fairer question than I really cared to think about right then.
Luckily, Alton chose that moment to indicate I should strap into a flight seat for descent, which conveniently pulled my mind away from the gloomy haze of the Enochia that had forsaken me, and back to the beating heart, twitchy nerves Enochia that was probably about to try to kill me, one last time.
“At the risk of infantilizing you,” Alton said, taking the flight seat beside me, “I feel compelled to point out one more time that this plan is ludicrous.”
I looked over at him. My freaking raknoth partner in crime. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it sounds like you’re afraid.”
He didn’t look afraid, of course. He just looked bored. And maybe a touch irritated.
“I merely recognize that our present chances of survival decrease drastically the moment our feet leave this ship,” he said.
“Well,” I said, pulling the slack out of my flight straps, “if the rakul are just gonna come finish the job one day anyway...”
That, if nothing else, got his goat. He didn’t say anything, apparently too dignified—or maybe just too angry—to resort to petty quips. Instead, he let his flying—and my stomach—do the talking. The rapid descent did little to calm my wired nerves. But the sight of Enochia rising to meet us on the wall-wide viewing screen at least gave me something to focus on.
My planet. My divided, war-torn planet.
It looked so much more peaceful from up here, spinning innocently on, even as the spilled blood dried across its surface and tensions mounted, threatening another flood imminently. Too much tension. Too many voices clamoring to be heard above all the rest.
And here I was, flying in to add more noise to the mix.
Noise that was critically important, I believed. Maybe even the signal to the noise, if I really wanted to be audacious about it. How I felt about it probably didn’t matter. It was the truth, as best as I could see it, and I needed to make it known. Simple as that.
The sun was just beginning to crest the horizon as Divinity came into view far below. It cast its first dazzling streaks across the city like a benevolent spirit reaching out to take Divinity in its palm, lighting the way to a bright new day. Lighting the White Tower up like a nice, big landing beacon.
Whether by Alton’s control, or by the merit of my own focus, a section of the ship’s viewing wall zoomed selectively in on the White Tower, bridging the distance in a moment of head-spinning disorientation before resolving into an impressively clear close-up of the gleaming tower. My eyes drifted to the top, where the Sanctum’s expansive team of masons and other craftsmen had already nearly finished reconstructing the outer shell of the demolished Great Hall. The place where I’d lost Carlisle. And the place where, not so very long ago, I’d awaited my own hanging at the setting of the sun.
It felt oddly appropriate that I should return now at the dawn of a new day.
I opened my mouth to remind Alton of our altitude cap, then closed it again. If he couldn’t remember that much, then this plan was probably already gropped anyway, and Divinity’s surface-to-air defenses were the least of our concerns. I wasn’t even rightly sure how high we were at the moment, given the lack of conventional meters and displays around the flight deck. Maybe, I reasoned, I could’ve asked the ship telepathically. But Alton leveled the ship out before I dared to test that theory, and my focus slid back to the distant gleam of the White Tower.
For a long handful of seconds, we hovered there in silence.
“For the life of me, I cannot seem to recall why I agreed to this,” Alton finally said.
Snapped back to reality by the broken silence, I unbuckled my flight straps and went to collect the ballistic helmet that would complete the rest of the jumpsuit I’d already donned. “Maybe you just have half a heart buried somewhere in there, after all.”
The raknoth unbuckled his straps, frowning my way all the while, then stood and walked out of the room, ignoring the jumpsuit helmet I offered him as if the very thought was too offensive or outrageous to even dignify with a response. I slipped on my own helmet and followed him off the flight deck, down the next corridor, toward the exit. The hatch peeled open as Alton approached, moving with its odd, organic fluidity. Alton stepped out to the unfurling stairs with easy confidence. I powered up my helmet display, took an unfortunate glance at the altimeter, and followed him.
To say the fall looked longer in person would’ve been an understatement. Then again, my opinion on the matter might’ve been somewhat skewed by the lack of anything but the slender boarding steps underfoot, and even more so by the fact that I knew what came next. Somehow, it had been a lot less nerve-racking, going for a standard skydive with a team of three competent Shapers when it had been too dark to even see the ground below. And now...
Alton crouched down to one knee and took hold of the boarding steps with one inhumanly strong hand. “Ready?”
... And now, it was time to set my reservations aside, make like an arcane missile, and go strike at the heart of the overwhelming forces unknowingly arrayed against the future of Enochia.
For what I sincerely hoped would be the last time, I climbed onto Alton Parker’s back, tucked myself into position, and clipped us together with a single hardsteel springhook, just in case—or, in all reality, for when—the flight proved even more turbulent than we already expected. The thought sent a wave of dizzy apprehension through my head.
I took a few deep breaths, resisting the onset of my adrenaline-fueled tunnel vision as best I could. “Ready when you are.”
Beneath me, I could’ve sworn I felt the raknoth ripple with something like silent laughter.
“What? What the scud are you laughing at?”
“I just thought of something,” he said. “A saying from Earth that I’ve always found rather amusing.”
I frowned at the back of his salt-and-pepper-haired head. “Yeah? What’s that?”
“Geronimo,” he said.
I opened my mouth to ask what the scud that meant.
Then the ship rocketed forward, and I was holding on for dear life.
36
Peaces
Call it a wild hunch, but I’m guessing whoever originally drew a line between so-called “low” velocity missiles and the rest of their speedy kin had probably never been sailing through the open air astride a raknoth, dangling precariously from the slender boarding steps of a speeding alien spaceship.
Or so I reasoned as I clung to Alton with a wide-eyed death grip, buffeted by a never-ending roar of wind, rocketing along at what my jumpsuit helmet display warned in flashing red letters was beyond terminal velocity for your average human being. And along with that flashing red realization, came another.
“Your helmet!” I sent, the wind rushing by far too loudly to allow for speaking. “You don�
�t have your helmet!”
“I am quite aware,” came Alton’s reply.
“But the trajectory...” I sent dumbly, eyeing the ballistic trajectory my own display had mapped out with rising panic. “Timing and velocity and... You said yourself this was ludicrous, and now you’re gonna—”
His head cocked around, just far enough for me to catch the crimson fire in his eyes. “Did they not teach you to trust your elders, Haldin?”
Neither I nor my somersaulting stomach had anything to say to that. We were both too busy gaping down at the docks of the Red River over two miles below, and at the southern edge of Divinity rushing by with startling speed. We were in it now. High as we were, and fancy scanner stealth aside, chances were fair that someone had spotted us by now. Which meant it was now or never. And judging by how fast the gleaming lance of the White Tower was approaching, and the way Alton tensed beneath me—like a predator preparing to pounce—it was more on the now side.
We’re going too fast, I thought to say. But it was already happening, without fuss or warning.
Alton didn’t jump, exactly. He didn’t need to. He simply let go, spinning the ship’s boarding steps out from beneath us with his telepathic control. And then we were flying. Or falling.
I hadn’t noticed him shedding velocity in the last seconds, but he must’ve, judging from the fact that we weren’t immediately slapped back into our place by the Divine Handbrakes of Alpha. The solid orange letters on my display put us flying right at the edge of our terminal velocity.
Flying through dead open air, two miles above the streets of Divinity.
Flying straight for the White Tower. Or so my display trajectory claimed. I had to admit, Alton had done an eerily perfect job of matching the calculated trajectory without any digital aid of his own. But no matter what either of them said, my gut was having a hard time believing that we were on target—that we were on anything, in fact, aside from our last precious moments of sweet, sweet life.
Children of Enochia Page 33
