“What product?” Darien asked suspiciously.
The Rat smiled, his lips turning into a giant U. “Ah, this is where it gets most interesting. The baron is a partner in a firm that has created the parts for a new long-range cannon. It shoots farther than anything in existence—up to 300 yards farther. But the Adrians don’t have the internal stability or the factories to build the cannons themselves. That’s why the parts must be delivered.”
“Delivered where?” asked Darien.
“Monrovia.”
Darien and Colonel Oliver glanced at each other. “Monrovia?” the colonel asked.
“Yes. They assemble the baron’s cannon parts with their own.”
Colonel Oliver pressed on. “Why is Monrovia interested in this cannon? They’re not at war with anyone.”
“They’re not at war now, but they might be one day.” The Rat’s eyes flickered.
“You know something else,” Darien said. “Out with it.”
“I have it from another good source that the Monrovians are going to sell the assembled cannons to the Palatians.”
“I see.”
Colonel Oliver stood up and began to pace. “With that kind of firepower, the Palatians could defeat our armies in a matter of weeks,” he observed.
The Rat sniffed. “In exchange for the cannons, the Palatians will give the Monrovians part of your territories.”
“Carve us up like a Christmas goose,” the colonel said. “Is that what they have in mind?”
“Likely.”
Darien mused, “Does the baron know about this?”
“I can’t say for sure. Though there is little that the baron doesn’t know.”
“Is it possible that he wants me to be his bodyguard to get me out of the way?” asked Darien. “He knows I’ll do anything to help our army if the war turns against them. Maybe he wants to neutralize me.”
“Wouldn’t you, if you were in his position?” Colonel Oliver asked.
“Unless he has something else up his sleeve.”
Darien gratefully dismissed the Rat and called in his officers. While he waited for them, he asked Kyle and Anna what they thought.
“I get confused by all the double-dealing,” Kyle complained. “It’s like you can’t trust anybody around here.”
“You can’t,” Darien confirmed. “Marus is surrounded by countries that want our land. Allegiances change almost as quickly as the weather.”
“Then what are you going to do?” Anna asked.
“Perhaps we can play both sides for a while,” Darien said.
“How?”
A thin smile crept across Darien’s face. “We’ll give safe delivery of the cannon parts to Monrovia so the baron will get his money. That’s what he’ll be paying us to do.”
Kyle didn’t understand. “What good is that?” he asked. “Then the Monrovians will build the cannons and send them to the Palatians.”
“How do you suppose they’ll get the cannons to the Palatians?” Darien said, pointing to a map hanging on the side of the tent. “They either have to take them south through Gotthard—which Prince Edwin will never allow since he is our ally. Or, more likely, they’ll transport them by train to the west of Gotthard. That’s wide-open wilderness. Anything can happen to those poor trains on the way.”
“You’ll sabotage the train tracks?” Anna asked.
Darien nodded.
“They’ll figure it out eventually,” Kyle observed.
“Maybe they will,” Darien agreed. “But in the meantime, we’ll find the plans to that cannon and get them to our own experts. That’ll even things out a little.”
The officers entered Darien’s tent and wondered why Darien, Anna, and Kyle were smiling.
For nearly three months, the plan worked just as Darien had hoped. While he and his army gave safe conduct to the baron’s supplies from Adria to Monrovia, a team of his guerrilla fighters blasted the railway lines west of Gotthard. The Monrovians switched their transportation from trains to trucks and horse-drawn wagons, but the result was the same. No matter how they tried to smuggle the cannons through, Darien’s fighters thwarted them. In that time, only six cannons got through to the Palatian front lines, not enough to make a big difference in the war.
One night, in a daring raid, Darien broke into the plant where the Monrovians built the cannons. The blueprints for the cannon were kept in a safe in the president’s office. The Rat, who was also skilled as a safecracker, got the safe open. Darien used a new contraption called a photographic camera to take pictures of the plans. Then Darien and the Rat crept away, and no one knew they had been there.
Darien had the blueprints delivered anonymously to General Liddell’s weaponry office. Darien was quite proud of himself.
In those three months, Kyle and Anna lived with Darien’s army in the town of Lizah. It was a mining town settled in an area of Adria where the lush green beauty of the Marus terrain and the Territory of Peace gave way to brown sand, cacti, and dry air. The Marutians found it barren and boring. Darien insisted that Kyle and Anna receive lessons from a tutor; he saw no reason for them to stop learning just because they weren’t in their own world. It annoyed Kyle more than Anna, since he disliked doing homework more than she did.
“If I have to go to school and do homework, I may as well be back home!” Kyle pouted. He often felt as though he’d lost his sense of purpose. He didn’t get that sick feeling in his stomach anymore, so he had become just another kid in the camp. He didn’t like it, and he began to question whether there had ever been an Unseen One to give him the power in the first place.
Anna, on the other hand, studied hard. It wasn’t unusual for Kyle to find her reading the Sacred Scroll that Darien had given her or walking and thinking in the wilderness alone.
“Don’t you get bored silly?” he once asked her.
She looked at him with the same indulgent expression their mother often gave him when he’d asked a ridiculous question. “No, I think it’s nice out here,” she said.
“Okay, so it’s nice. But when are we going home?” he asked.
Anna shrugged. She had no idea.
“Don’t you care? Aren’t you worried about Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa?”
Anna had to think about it before she could answer. “I’m not worried,” she replied after a moment. “Somehow the Unseen One will work it all out when we go back.”
“If we go back,” Kyle said. “I don’t think the Unseen One is interested—if He’s even out there.”
Anna gazed at her brother for a moment. “You’re upset because you don’t feel special anymore,” she observed.
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what I mean,” Anna replied. “Being chosen doesn’t mean excitement day in and day out. It doesn’t mean we’re always being used in obvious ways by the Unseen One. Sometimes it means waiting and being patient and staying faithful.”
Kyle folded his arms. “Don’t preach at me,” he said grumpily.
“You’re not sure you believe anymore.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Can’t you believe without that feeling?”
“Oh, that’s easy for you to say!” he snapped. “You get those dreams and visions all the time. If the Unseen One gave me dreams and visions, I’d believe, too.”
Anna shook her head. “I haven’t had those dreams in a long time,” she said. “But I don’t need to have them to believe.”
“Well, maybe I do.”
“Then you’re believing in the wrong thing,” she snapped.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” He turned and walked away from her. She was right in what she said, he knew. The truth was, he felt deserted and rejected by the Unseen One. It was time to take matters into his own hands.
That night, Kyle ventured out from Lizah to see if it would help him think the way Anna thought. The desert evening was cool, so he started a small campfire. He brooded next to it, bugged that he still didn
’t know what to do to get home. He heard a rustling behind him. Before he could see who it was, the Rat was standing next to him, warming his hands over the fire as if he’d been there all along.
“You scared me,” Kyle said in an accusing tone.
“My apologies,” the Rat said. “What ails you?”
“Nothing.”
“I see you sitting here alone, and I think to myself that you are not happy. Then I think that I am the Rat and able to find things that might make you happy.”
“You can’t find anything that will make me happy,” Kyle said testily.
“Don’t be so certain, young protector.”
Kyle looked up at him. His eyes looked like embers in the firelight. “I don’t have any money. Well, none that you can use.”
“On the contrary. You have money from your world.”
Kyle frowned. “What do you know about my world?”
“I’m the Rat. I’m supposed to know everything I can. You want to go back to your world. That much I know.”
“Yeah, but the Old Judge is dead, and there’s nobody else who can help us,” Kyle said. He jabbed at the fire with a stick. It spat back at him.
“The Old Judge was not the last of his kind.”
“Anna doesn’t know how either.”
“Anna is not the last of that kind,” the Rat said. “There is another. A woman. She can help you.”
Kyle brightened up. “Really?”
“I would not say so unless I was sure.” The Rat rubbed his hands together and waited.
“Where is she?” Kyle asked. “How can I talk to her?”
The Rat spread his arms. “She’s a long way from here. Back in Marus. You’ll have to journey a day and a half to get to her.”
“I don’t care. I’m ready to go.”
“Then give me some of your otherworldly money and the Rat will take care of everything.”
Kyle dug around in his pocket. He found a couple of dollar bills and 63 cents in change, and he thought he’d better hang on to a dollar.
The Rat smiled as Kyle placed the rest of the money in his palm. “You’re too generous,” the Rat said. “Meet me here in an hour.”
Kyle was beside himself with joy and ran to tell Anna the news.
Anna wasn’t in her room. Darien had asked her—and Kyle—to come to the briefing room in his headquarters at what was once a schoolhouse. When no one could find Kyle, Anna went alone. The briefing room (actually, one of the old classrooms) was crowded with officers and the elected leaders of the community. To the left of the podium, Baron Orkzy sat, regal and erect. He could have been the principal for this school. Darien called everyone to silence.
“I have important news. The war with the Palatians is deadlocked,” Darien announced. “The Palatians are fed up.”
“They’re ready to surrender then?” someone asked with a chuckle.
Darien didn’t smile. “No. They’re ready to conquer. The baron and I met this evening. He tells me the Palatians are calling in all debts from the nations who’re friendly to them. As of midnight tonight, the Monrovians are going to join the war on the side of Palatia.”
The room erupted in shouts and protests.
Darien waved his arms to get them quiet again. “It’s worse than that,” he continued. “Many of the leaders of the Adrian tribes are ready to side with Monrovia and Palatia as well.”
“Even the baron?” another voice called out.
Darien gestured to the baron. “Please tell them what you told me.”
The baron stood up, a giant in the room. “I despise this sort of thing, I have to confess,” he began. “I prefer neutrality. It makes for better business. But the Adrian leaders are putting a lot of pressure on me to swear allegiance to Palatia.”
“And what about us?” a woman shouted.
“To put it bluntly, they don’t trust you,” the baron said. “They seem to suspect that you’ve had something to do with all those nasty explosions on the Monrovian railway lines. Imagine that. They believe that you actively thwarted the delivery of the cannons to the Palatians.”
The room was silent. A few knowing smiles were exchanged.
The baron pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and dabbed the side of his nose. “Naturally, it’s none of my business since the parts I’d promised to them were delivered. I’d rather not know whether you were involved as saboteurs. Now, however, they’re forcing me to be involved. They want me to make a decision. And by forcing me to make a decision, they’re forcing you to make a decision.”
“What kind of decision?”
“Whether you’re going to stay here and behave yourselves, or whether you’re going to side with your countrymen.” The baron leaned against the podium dramatically. “One will ensure that you live in peace, the other will put you at risk as enemies of our allies.”
A wave of murmuring rolled through the gathering.
“I’ve been told to offer you a deal, though,” said the baron.
“What kind of deal?” Colonel Oliver asked from the side of the room.
“Everyone knows of the conflict between King Lawrence and General Darien. It is also well known that General Darien will likely win out as your next ruler.”
Colonel Henri stood up. “What’s your point, Baron?” he asked.
The baron looked at the colonel with disdain. “Side with the Palatians and you will be given a significantly large portion of Marus’s northern counties. General Darien will be installed as your king. This the Palatians promise to you if they are victorious.”
The room erupted again in a commotion of catcalls and dissension.
“You have until tomorrow to decide,” the baron said over the noise, and with a grand flourish, he left the room.
Darien returned to the podium and tried to get control of the crowd. Then the arguments among them began. Anna didn’t stay. She felt an odd but strong desire to take a walk.
The dream took her by surprise. She hadn’t had one in such a long time and had resigned herself to the idea that she might never have one again. But there it was, more vivid and real than any she’d ever had before.
She saw King Lawrence. He was thin and wild-eyed, pacing with his hands clasped behind his back in what looked like a tent. General Liddell stood nearby, a dark and sour expression on his face.
“Well, sire?” Liddell asked.
“I don’t know! I don’t know! How can I know?” the king cried out.
“A decision—orders to attack—anything will be helpful at this time.” The anger in General Liddell’s voice was unmistakable. “In just a few hours, we’ll have not one but three enemies to contend with. What do you want us to do?”
The king paced more quickly. “If the Old Judge were here, he’d know. He would tell me what to do. Why did he desert me?”
“Because he’s dead, sire. That’s what happens to people. They die. We’ll die if you don’t make a decision soon.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, General. He’s not dead. He’s around here somewhere. We just have to pick up the phone and give him a call.” The king put his thumb and pinkie against his face as if he were talking into a phone.
General Liddell worked his jaw, clenching and unclenching his teeth. “Of course,” he said with open sarcasm. “Why didn’t I think of it before?”
“I want our armies to stay right where they are for the time being,” the king suddenly commanded. “Don’t move. Not an inch, not a muscle. I have to find someone to consult with.”
“Like who?” General Liddell looked as if he might slap the king if he mentioned the Old Judge again.
“There’s a woman. I don’t remember her name. She has the power. We’ll visit her, and she’ll tell us what to do.”
“A woman?”
“Yes, yes. Don’t be so thick. She lives near . . . Dorr. That’s it. I can find her if we go there.” The king stopped pacing and leaned over a table with a map on it. He pointed. “That little town right there.”
General Liddell didn’t bother to look. “You’re going to leave your troops now? Sire, with all due respect, if they see you leave, they’ll panic.”
“They won’t see me leave. We’ll disguise ourselves. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll disguise ourselves, go to the woman, then come back. Just tell the men that we’re in conference and can’t be disturbed.”
“Sire, please—”
“No! Stop arguing with me!” the king screamed. “We have to go! We have no hope of winning if we don’t go!”
Anna woke up, alone in the desert. Something made a chirping noise nearby. An owl hooted.
Was this a dream to report to Darien? She wondered. Nothing in it would help them with their decision to stay in Adria or join the king’s troops. Then again, maybe she simply couldn’t see it. She made her way back to Darien’s headquarters. It was deserted except for Colonel Oliver, who was locking the door. He informed her that General Darien had gone off somewhere to think and pray. Whatever she had to tell him would have to wait until morning.
She thanked him and walked to the room she shared with Kyle at the Lizah Hotel. It was dark.
“Kyle?” she called out as she lit a lamp. “Are you here?”
She looked around, her hand brushing against a piece of paper on the table in front of her. It was a note from Kyle.
“I’ve gone to see someone who will help us get home,” the note said in his distinctive cursive. “I’ll be back in a couple of days. Then we’ll go home!” He had underlined go home in heavy strokes.
Anna sat down in a chair and buried her face in her hands.
The sun hadn’t fully risen yet when someone knocked on the door. Anna, who hadn’t slept all night and was still fully dressed, padded across the room.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Darien,” the familiar voice said.
She opened the door, and before he could say anything she thrust Kyle’s note into his hands. He read it, then frowned. “He needs a good kick in his backside,” he growled. “It’s the wrong day to do something like this.”
The Marus Manuscripts Page 14
