As of now, cleanliness was the silliest thing to worry about.
“I’m lost. This is just superstition. For all your high tech you live in the middle ages.”
“This never happens on your earth?”
“No!” She moved onto her back to find him above her. “No.”
“If I took you outside, I could show you the places where small quakes have already stirred the foundations. I could point out how this is not storm season. How they never have rain now. But...”
He tapped her nose. “This is the whole reason for the Swathe. It’s why we move constantly – the Aerthe rebels against us. If we could’ve beaten this, we would have. A century has passed. Or more, or less...records have been lost through so much misfortune and for reasons that might be due to the unforgiving Aerthe. Long ago we tried to settle, many times, many places, and thousands died.”
She’d blindfolded herself, quarantined her mind. She’d believed them superstitious and stupid, and yet the ships of the Swathe would be an impossibility on Earth. The evidence added up:
The doctor laying on of hands and being absolutely correct in her diagnosis.
The contracts they signed in blood that led to bad karma.
One of those could be dismissed, but this, the Aerthe stirring, the history Mako spoke of...
The Aerthe rejected them like the body would reject a viral infection.
Which made the Aerthe alive.
Insane.
There was only one conclusion that made sense, and yet it didn’t.
This world had magic.
“We’re leaving tomorrow. Before we return to the Swathe, I’m taking you somewhere I found long ago. A place in the mountains left behind by some unknown people. I’ve never figured out who built it – us, or perhaps the Grounders or Scavs when they were greater people.”
She barely heard him. If there was magic, it was a subtle type that didn’t show itself much at all. It functioned behind the scenes without wands and incantations, or pentagrams, or light displays. If it existed, this world was more foreign than she could ever have imagined.
How much of what she’d seen and assumed to be science was magic? The way the mechlings sucked power from the air? That might be either.
The portals. Of course. Gio had said they were an impossible magic.
Mako had doubted her ability to survive without him or some other protector and now...she was inclined to agree.
The rules for everything around her had been torn up and scattered.
She turned onto her side again and snuggled back into him, needing his warmth, the reassurance of his bodyweight, and yes, feeling the need for protection.
“You should get up and wash.”
“Soon. One more minute, please.” Then she added, “Sir,” as a kind of quiet punctuation mark, and felt the subtle change in the atmosphere when he registered what she’d done.
Strange how it’d pleased her to say it too.
One more minute, while she acclimatized to her new appreciation of where she was on this world of Aerthe.
“I used to think you were a beast,” she said, musing.
“That’s only half of me.”
She snorted. “And the rest?”
“You might never know.” He slid his hand over her neck. “That depends on you.”
“Oh.”
Mako stroked her hair, and she calmed. She’d been so determined to stay free but she’d reached a limit she was afraid to venture past and this man had become much more to her than a scary beast.
Chapter 42
In a wide arc the Ramm zoomed in on the snow-covered mountain peak. To either side a row of other peaks nudged at the blue and pink sky. He was being careful and surveilling first. Though nothing else should be able to reach this high, one day climbers could find this house, or the Scavs might resurrect some machinery – a sky craft or a climbing vehicle.
“Are we going down there?” Emery peered at the scenery.
“Yes.”
They circled and drifted down to land in the snow on a flat area. Snowflakes dusted the armored cockpit glass by the time he’d unstrapped from his harness.
“It’s a place I found with my team years ago. We used to visit here in short stints, so as not to stir the Aerthe. An avalanche would destroy this place. “Don’t know who made it but most of the walls are intact.”
He unclipped her seat harness and helped her up. The pants, boots, gloves, and heavy coat she wore would be adequate for the dash to the door of this house. He’d done what they had figured out to do on previous missions – parked the Ramm so her engine heat would blow into a gash in the walls and heat up the interior. A hose from the Ramm’s heat ducting would do a better job and he’d hook that up soon.
“We’ll stay here a night then return to the Swathe. I have a few last files to evaluate from the cache JI left inside Mammoth.”
He’d mentioned the files to her last night though she didn’t understand the implications. He barely did. The potential for the information JI had mined from the ship’s system was vast. Frightening and vast. If he could hook Mammoth up again, do the same...he had a superb spy in the mechling.
The run to the circular, gold-and-steel door that led into this high-altitude house was short, if covered in feet of snow. The spoked wheel that unlocked the door was frozen. A single shot from the Kolk warmed it up enough to get it moving. When he turned the wheel, the metal leeched both heat and cold into his gloves. With a shove of his shoulder, the door swung inward.
“Wow. What is this?”
Stalactites of ice hung from the high ceiling of this entrance foyer, and ice and snow blanketed everywhere with white. The ceilings were tall enough for giants.
“A rich person’s holiday house? A last resort place for someone to hide after an apocalypse? We never decided which.”
On the opposite side, well-sealed double doors opened into a large room – this was where his team had slept and eaten when they stayed.
The furniture was intact, if suffering from many years of temperature changes. To make room for the team, they’d stacked the rectangular dining table and matching chairs against the wall to the left. The material they were made of was black with a golden inlay, as were the few cabinets.
The rime of ice on the floor cracked under his and Emery’s boots. That would melt once he had the heating set up.
Coils of a silvery metal cable lay in a corner. His stomach cramped at the reminder. It’d been collected and left there from the last time he was here with his now-dead team. He’d revenged them and they’d left him to live on, his heart ripped out, his guts rotten with the ugliness of revenge.
The past, it was only the past. Emery had reminded him of what life was truly about.
“We can sleep here.” He walked to the table and dropped the soft bags he carried. Without his whole team to help clean up, the floor was going to be wet all night. He’d have to find another place to set up the bedding. Maybe the upturned table.
“What is this?” Almost reverently, Emery stepped to a ceiling-high, circular window.
From the center, spokes of silver radiated, splitting the window into six pieces. It had never broken though the earth must have shifted under the house.
The architecture of this dwelling showed the technical excellence of the people on this world before his had invaded. It made him wonder at how the Aerthe might have appeared long ago. No wonder she was angry with Mekkers.
He joined Emery where she’d stopped a yard from the glass. Snow had piled against the outside circle of the window. Ice crystals on the upper half of the glass scattered the rays of light into sun-bright splotches that decorated the walls, the floor, and Emery. He took her shoulders and kissed where one such spot of light had landed on her temple.
“On a clear day, you can see for miles.”
“But I can see now. Look.” She pointed and he looked along the line of her arm.
Through an uncovered patch of glass, he saw
the land below. The peak dropped away past this limit of the house. Where the Swathe had passed, a raw orange path showed but further in the distance was a strip of bright green where plant life seemed to have blossomed with grand fertility.
“The damage from the Swathe is just...” She shook her head. “Awful.”
“See beyond though? The greener strip? That is where we passed by in an earlier year. The harvesting of the soil churns up the dirt and makes for a rich regrowth.”
“Like farmers turning the soil of their fields? Then maybe what you do does have a purpose?”
“All I know is the world doesn’t want us to be still. I’m going to hook up the heating. We will sleep here where we can look out over the night sky.”
“We need a campfire,” she mused. “Marshmallows to toast.”
He laughed. Whatever marshmallows might be, they’d eaten at the town before leaving. It was simpler than cooking here.
“Only if you want to suffocate on smoke. The Ramm will give us warmth. Put on that dress I showed you once the room warms up. I’ll be a while outside, hooking up the duct, then I want to show you something in the room through there.”
He walked to the door he’d indicated and opened it so the heat would permeate through.
This day wasn’t a simple stopover. He could’ve gone directly to the Swathe, but he needed to gauge her attitude, and he wished to show her more of the Aerthe.
If she was a service slave, he’d not care, but a blood concubine gained advantages. Her loyalty and obedience must be unquestioned.
Mako finished with the heating arrangements and brought in some water in buckets. Last of all, he returned with two mechlings at his heels, one of them Mammoth, and by then the inner rooms were warm. Emery had changed into the dress.
He shucked his coat and left it with the bags along with a handful of red snow gems he’d picked that’d late flowered. “Come.”
The fine translucent overlay of the pink dress misted outward in the stirring her movement created. It suited her perfectly – not a dress he’d expected to find at a market. The trader had warned him he’d heard others discussing the pros and cons of killing him and selling her to the Scavs. A double bargain was had. Forewarned, he’d left early.
Emery had no notion of how the slave economy worked. The Scavs might hate the Mekkers and the Grounders weren’t fussed either, but trade went on. People liked their profits, even when it meant trading in people.
Emery fell in step with him as he headed for the smaller offshoot room.
“Wait. Have you forgotten your lessons so quickly? Walk one step back from me. Unless I change what I ask of you.” After a small hesitation, she moved back.
If she became a blood concubine, this would be what she must do. A service slave would walk even further back, with her head partly lowered. He could imagine her in either role. One, he wanted, the other would be a failure.
“Very good. Emery, this is what I call the map room.”
The centerpiece was a transparent, circular table. Incorporated in this table was the one piece of tech in the house his team had managed to revive.
Though the room was windowless and not large, a tall, skeleton warrior in the far right corner lent the room some distinction.
Emery actually flinched. “I hope the people who lived here didn’t resemble that?”
“Whoever lived here was an artist, I think. He’s made of that silver cable you might have noticed in the other room. There’s a silver serpent wriggling across the ceiling behind you too. The cable’s been twisted and knotted together.”
She retreated and peered upward, her neck craned back. “I totally missed that.”
“The ceilings are high, the lighting bad, but, look here, I wanted to show you this.”
With a hand at her back, he brought her closer to the table, forgetting how cold his fingers were and eliciting a shiver. Then he put the two mechlings over a low box below the table.
“Power on,” he instructed. Both mechlings began transferring power to the box. That this could work made him wonder whose tech the Mekkers used. Was it someone else’s technology?
The table began to glow and a three-dimensional planet sprang into being above it, hovering, covered by a blanket of blue-and-pink sky and fluffy clouds.
“Is this Aerthe?” Emery leaned in, with her hands on the high lip of the table. “How old is this house, this table?”
“Very, very old. This is not now; this world is Aerthe when we Mekkers invaded. It seems to show the Last Days, as we call the end of the war.” He pointed to a site and the world expanded to become a magnified segment. “Here is where the Swathe is heading now. To the Gathering place.”
A huge land ship showed on the 3D map and around it were what seemed a mechanized army with much smaller vehicles.
“Those are yours?”
“No. The large ship was ours. The others represent the enemy. I can tell from the floating writing. We destroyed them soon after this, and sometime later we began the Swathe and have been travelling ever since. See those dotted lines that cut the countryside into big pieces?”
She nodded “Yes. This is such a big hologram. The way this shows different climates and how it moves, the clouds move, the trees, it’s amazing. You have so few oceans. So what are the dotted lines?”
Mako smiled at how eager she seemed – on tiptoes, leaning forward to study the globe. War was ugly until it became history.
“Those were the boundaries of the countries the Aerthe was divided into, I believe. They don’t exist anymore. We destroyed them.”
“Oh. Not so nice.”
“No, but it’s done.” He took her under the shoulders and swung her out from the table, depositing Emery on her feet again. “We can’t go back, however much I dream of figuring out a way for us to stop having to be the Swathe.”
“You’d have to stop the planet from trying to kill you? And I’m assuming that’s real and not a myth.”
“Hmmm. One day I will let you see more of what the Aerthe does to Mekkers who stay too long in one place, but tonight I’m just telling you things. Take them as truth.”
“Your past?”
“Yes.” He ushered her from the room, glancing up at the woven serpent that stretched the length of the room.
“It won’t fall from there? Land on us?” Emery had paused in the doorway.
“Whatever holds it up there has survived until now. It won’t fall. You’ve been too ill until now for me to remind you of how things will be, but tonight you are under my rules. These are not the same as the lessons you were taught. I will be more lenient in some respects, less so in others.”
He upended the long dining table and placed it near the round window, threw the bedding inside, then he brought one of the black chairs to the cleared center of the room. On that chair he sat.
Emery looked unsure.
“Kneel before me.” He gestured at the floor. It was wet and would no doubt be gritty and uncomfortable to her knees, but that was a part of the point of this.
Though she grimaced, Emery knelt and waited.
“Thank you. Your obedience to direct orders should be unquestioned. I will punish disobedience.” The need for that would be minimal. Or else.
Her nod was as wide-eyed as any he’d seen from her. Dubious.
Where to begin? He had planned this, but words never sat still. Next time he’d write it down as a speech.
“I stopped here to show you the world globe and more. I once had a team – I led them. They came here. One of them admired the art and hoped to create something similar with the cables, planned to take some of it back to the Swathe. He didn’t live long enough. Another, Shay, was my lover, my heart, the woman I hoped to be with all my life. You reminded me of her from the first day I saw you. I held that against you for a long while. I apologize for that. My team, they all died.”
She whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“Accepted.” He carried on. Now was not the time to
dwell on their deaths more than he needed to. “I set out to avenge them. The Scavs had tortured and killed them. I succeeded too well. Hatred became my life, until you arrived, Emery. You gave me back a part of myself. And yet...” He clenched his fist and shifted forward.
“You are a slave, and will always be one on this world. If you cannot embrace that, I can’t trust you. The information Mammoth holds...” He gestured at the mechling where it sat on the floor near her, scribbling in water with his trunk. “Is so earth-shaking that I believe I can achieve great things using it, that I can shift the forces that guide the Swathe.”
“Oh my.” She seemed genuinely awed.
“And I would like to have you with me, as my blood concubine, but not if your faith is elsewhere. Not if you cannot submit as my slave. I still doubt you.”
“I see. Can I ask, Sir, what a blood concubine is?”
“An elevated slave. One who has more rights. You’d have more protection from the whims of other Mekkers. It would be better for you, and it is what I want for you, but...” He tapped his thigh with his fist. “The first days at the Swathe may be dangerous when I shake the foundations of the powers that be.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“You think too much like a free woman.”
She lowered her head and looked at the floor. “Does honesty help? I admit it is hard for me, and that my main reason for accepting you as my...” Her mouth screwed up for a millisecond as if what she said and thought was distasteful. “Master...is because I see no choice in this. It is difficult for me.”
And there was the crux of the matter.
“It must be automatic. It must be your belief, Emery. Doubt cannot be in your heart, soul, or mind, because where I go in the near future may be a violent path.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I can’t tell you more, but JI has opened a way I never thought would be possible.”
No matter how long he studied her, how much he turned this over, he was getting no deeper into the solution. He sighed and stood.
“Show me you can at least accomplish the obeisance. That much you have learned already.”
She lowered her torso to the floor, hands sliding in the damp, until her face was buried in her outstretched arms.
Acquired Possession (The Machinery of Desire Book 1) Page 22
