King of Ends

by Sam Ryder

  I laughed. “Glad you heard my knock on your window. It was touch and go there for a while.”

  “How’d they get past the Queen’s guards?” Gehn wondered aloud.

  “Probably killed them. Oh no you don’t,” I said, noticing one of the other two shaking off the cobwebs and trying to push to his feet. It appeared he was the only survivor, though his nose was so broken it was completely crooked.

  The man managed to get upright, though his legs wobbled underneath him, unsteady.

  I yanked the sword out of the fallen man’s chest and aimed it right at him.

  “Please,” he said from a mouth crusted with drying blood from his nose. He raised his hands before himself, pleading. I pushed the tip of the blade into his throat—just enough to get his attention.

  “I will not kill you,” I said. “I will let you live.”

  “Really?” He was sobbing now, tears mixing with blood and snot.

  “On one condition.”

  “Anything!”

  I lifted the blade from his throat, grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him close. “Go back to Rome. Tell Atticus I’m going to cut his head from his neck. Can you do that?”

  The man nodded rapidly, and I released him. He turned and ran, tripping on his own feet, righting himself and not looking back as he sprinted out of Paris.

  “I wouldn’t have shown him such mercy,” Gehn said, wiping the blood from her mouth with a snatch of shirt she’d ripped from one of the dead men.

  “It wasn’t mercy,” I said. “Even though the message is from me, Atticus will fly off the handle. I suspect he’ll kill the messenger on the spot. Anyway, it’s a strategical move.”

  “How so?” With a thook sound, Gehn’s fangs retracted back into her gums.

  “It goes back to what Simon and Vega were saying earlier today. About Atticus and his ego, his lust for power. Threatening him will cut him to the quick. It’ll make him act rashly, impatiently. Then he’ll do something stupid and open himself up to more risk.” I wanted Atticus as rattled as possible. According to our friend Insurgence members, that’s how he made mistakes. If I wanted to win this war, I had to toy with him.

  Chapter 31

  Hug it out

  “Nobody in this city knows Atticus as well as you guys do,” I said to Simon and Vega the next morning at breakfast. “And the more I know, the better. You have valuable information about him that we could use. And hell... I’m just curious, anyway. How does this little piece of shit have such control over the Rising? Why do so many people follow him?”

  “Well, I guess I would know better than anybody,” Simon said. “I was there from the beginning. He and I were friends once. That’s the only reason I’m still alive. I’ve challenged him more than anyone, which would normally mean a death sentence, but he cut me some slack. So I stopped challenging him outwardly, and begin secretly undermining him. The truth is, he’s a master manipulator. He spent years building up a dedicated following of people. He earned their trust and charmed them into believing in his vision of the future. He’s a very effective leader in that regard. But behind closed doors, he’s a shit leader.”

  “What makes him a shit leader?” I asked.

  “His temper,” Vega said. “He goes from calm and collected to losing his mind at the drop of a hat.”

  “And people just take it?”

  “For the most part, yes,” Simon said. “There’s some kind of ecclesiastical justice involved there, too. His word is truth to these people. If you offend him or committed a ‘sin’, he forces you to confess publicly and suffer the consequences.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Eh, could be something simple and relatively harmless, like throwing cold water on you while you’re fully clothed,” Vega said. “Just a way to make sure everyone knew that you did something wrong. You work in wet clothes the rest of the day, that sort of thing. It’s basically humiliation tactics, mental torture. If you cross a major line, however, he’ll have you killed.”

  “I don’t know why people follow this guy,” I muttered as I cut into what was left of the hunk of meat on my plate.

  “There’s nothing else to believe in,” Vega said. “When the blast hit, it wiped out everything. Everything. If you were somebody who believed in a higher purpose to all of this, you struggled to understand why you were now forced to live in this barren wasteland of a world. Atticus presents an idea of how things should be. He presents a world that somehow makes sense to a lot of people searching for something—someone—to believe in. When you have nothing, it’s really easy to believe in anything. Atticus has taken full advantage of that.”

  “And when you commit—all in—to this guy, you start ignoring stuff,” Simon said. “Justifying things as part of a ‘greater purpose.’ It’s the same mentality that allowed cults to pop up now and then in the old world.”

  “Why don’t you just kill him?” I asked Simon. “If you were so close to him, you would’ve had access, right?”

  “I considered it many times, but before I really saw how bad things were getting, he’d locked me out of his inner circle. He doesn’t trust me anymore, though he’s too arrogant to think I would actively work against him.”

  It was just the three of us at breakfast, but then the other showed up, three Enders and one human. Hannah sat next to Vega, creating a buffer between her and the three Ender women. Gehn, however, remained standing. “That’s my seat,” she said to Hannah.

  Hannah looked back at her, looking slightly amused. “I don’t see your name on it, Sis.”

  “After last night, I’m not in the mood. Get up.”

  This was a new version of Gehn I hadn’t seen before. Less timid. It had gradually started coming out of her over the weeks I’d known her, as we’d traveled together, but now she was in full bloom, in her element. It was pretty damn hot.

  Hannah looked like she was considering fighting her sister on it, but then shrugged, still smiling. “All yours,” she said. Hannah got up, circling to the other side of the table to cozy up to me. I didn’t mind that either.

  Gehn sat right next to Vega, who openly glared at her. “Morning,” Gehn said, as if she hadn’t just sat next to the one person in Paris she shouldn’t have sat next to.

  Vega said nothing, gripping the table with both hands.

  I was considering getting involved in what felt like a storm about to rain down hellfire on our quiet breakfast, but then Gehn said, “Listen, bitch. I know you have a bad taste in your mouth from when that Ender killed your father. I get it. I watched my own parents get killed by humans. That made it hard to trust any humans again. But I overcame that. I realized that people—whether Enders or human—are just people. Good, bad, ugly, flawed. So don’t judge Enders by a few bad apples and I’ll do the same with humans. Can we agree on that?”

  Vega blinked, shocked by the outburst. Her lips pursed, her teeth grinding together. Oh shit, here we go, I thought. But then her expression slackened and she smiled—actually smiled. And then she spoke: “Yeah, I can do that. So long as you don’t call me bitch again, bitch.”

  Gehn smiled back. “Deal,” she said, turning away to grab some food from the sharing plate.

  Hannah, her arm roped around me, said, “Do you two want to hug it out or something to seal the deal?”

  Gehn looked at Vega, who looked back at her.

  “Pass,” the both said at the same time.

  I smirked. As long as they didn’t kill each other, I was good if they didn’t want to hug.

  Now that the baggage between Vega and Gehn had been taken care of, I refocused the conversation on the previous topic, Atticus. “Does Atticus have any other weaknesses besides his ego?”

  “Hmm,” Simon mused. “Maybe? He had a falling out with his father a while back.”

  “What?” This was news to me. I didn’t even know his dad was still alive. “His father lives in Rome?”

  “His name’s Joseph,” Simon replied. “And he lived in Rome fo
r a while, supported his son’s aspirations of leadership. But then something happened and he left. Moved out of Rome and became a real loner.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  Simon shook his head. “I don’t know the details, only that heated words were exchanged and it ended in a fistfight. Atticus punched him in the face and he left. I saw Atticus afterwards—he had a nice shiner.”

  I smiled at the thought. “So Daddy punched him back,” I said.

  “Seems that way.” Simon chuckled. “And that was it. They hit each other, then Joseph took off. No one really knows much about what he’s up to though.”

  “Anybody know exactly where Joseph is now?” I asked.

  “Last I heard, somewhere on the outskirts of Geneva,” Vega answered. “I’m sure he’s not advertising who he is or anything.”

  “Yeah, but I know what he looks like,” Simon said. “I saw him enough times.”

  A light bulb went off in my head. Why not go find Joseph? He might be able to shed more light on the best approach to defeating his son. He might even want to help us. The more information we had, the better.

  “We should find him,” I said.

  Simon and Vega looked at each other.

  “I doubt he’d want to join us,” Simon said. “I think he just wanted to get away from all this and stop being reminded of what happened between him and his son.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “But at least we could get more insight into Atticus’s psyche. Then we can attack smarter the next time.”

  “I’m willing to try,” Simon said, “but he might just tell us all to go to hell.”

  “If that’s the worst thing that could happen to us, I’m willing to risk it,” I said. “There’s only one way to find out. Besides, how crazy would Atticus go if we recruited his father?”

  Chapter 32

  Vega

  Our traveling group consisted of Simon, Vega, Belenie—in case of injuries—Belogon, and one of Belogon’s trusted men, Derig. I was wary of having another male Ender on a mission that required poise and tact, but Belogon insisted Derig was an excellent right-hand man in his own right, a deadly shot, and a tough soldier. Still, I wanted to question the man first.

  “Do you honestly believe that I’m on your side?” I asked him.

  Derig snorted through his grapefruit-sized nose. “The Queen wouldn’t lie to her people, sir,” he said. “If she vouches for you, I trust you. You have my word.”

  That was good enough for me.

  I could tell Gehn and Hannah were jealous, but they agreed to hold down the fort in Paris and ensure the soldiers were ready to march for Rome as soon as we returned to the Ender city. Hannah hugged me tightly before we left, offering a single, long kiss on my lips. “Something to remember me by,” she said, squeezing my ass.

  “Oh, I’ll remember,” I said. “When I get back, I’ll need to talk to you in private.”

  “It’s a date,” she said lustily.

  Gehn hugged me next, shaking her head. “Get a room, you two,” she said, feigning annoyance.

  “Only if you join us,” I said.

  “As if,” she said aloud for all to hear, but in my ear whispered, “When you get back I’m going to fuck your brains out.”

  “It’s a date,” I said, wishing I could fast forward past this trip to our return.

  Our group set out in the early afternoon. As we delved deeper into the wasteland, a south wind picked the dust off the ground and whipped it across our faces, stinging our eyes.

  “Hell of a wind today!” I shouted to Simon.

  Simon pointed to the sky. “Wow, look at that!”

  We all paused to look up. A massive cumulonimbus cloud towered over the desert. It looked like a skyscraper staring down at us.

  “You think it means we’ll see rain?” Vega asked.

  I shook my head. “Fat chance,” I said.

  I wasn’t just trying to be a jerk. Rain didn’t fall much in the Ends. I had seen rain a handful of times at most, torrential downpours that wreaked havoc on everyone and everything. Still, I loved the idea, but thought it was a longshot, regardless of the cloud and wind patterns.

  Yet, the wind nearly blew us all over, and showed no signs of letting up.

  “We’re going to struggle to sleep tonight,” I said to Simon.

  Simon pointed ahead. I followed the gesture, but all I could see was dust being kicked up in huge clouds.

  “I’m familiar with this area from my younger days,” he said. I didn’t mention that he was still very young—experience out here meant more than years of life. “There’s a cave that way. It doesn’t have all the comforts of home, but it’ll provide some protection from the elements.”

  “Great idea,” I said. “Lead the way.”

  As we trudged along, the wind seemed to push back against us, a steady hand in our faces trying to thwart our progress. Worse, the clouds grew darker and more foreboding. It felt like dusk, even though the hidden sun was hours from setting.

  “There!” Simon shouted after another half-hour of fighting for every inch.

  In the distance, I could make out a rocky outcropping. I couldn’t see the cavemouth, but even without one the rocks would provide a respite from the gusting wind.

  Simon led us directly toward it and then threaded between two large boulders that, if the outcropping were a squatting giant, would serve as his meaty shoulders. Just past was a dark cavemouth. Just enough light filtered inside that I could tell that it went back much further than I’d expected. It was almost as if the rocks had been hollowed out by a giant ice cream scoop. “Plenty of room for everyone!” I called over the howling wind in our ears. We filed in, one-by-one.

  As I waited for the last of the group, Belenie, to enter, a massive gust nearly knocked me over. I grabbed onto the rock wall of the entrance for balance, then followed the rest of them inside, grateful for the shelter and Simon’s knowledge of these lands.

  The cave felt safe, and the warmth of our bodies would soon heat up the inside, at least to a more comfortable level than the bitterness outside.

  “How are you so familiar with this part of the Ends?” I asked Simon.

  He slumped down, shrugging off his pack. He propped himself with his back to the wall, took a long slug of his water canteen, and then responded. “When Atticus and I first began to show signs of being at odds on certain issues, he got rid of me by assigning me busy work; namely, mapping out the Ends.”

  “Wait…what? So Atticus knows about this cave because it’s on some map you drew?” Suddenly the cave wasn’t feeling so safe and secure anymore.

  Simon shook his head. “Let’s just say I wasn’t as thorough as I was supposed to be.” He grinned. “Which means it’ll make an ideal spot for temporary cover.”

  I chuckled, wondering how many key geographic features he’d accidentally left off the maps he’d created for Atticus. My military brain was also wondering whether there was a way we could use that to our advantage down the road.

  Temporary was definitely the word. The cave reached about fifty yards in from the entrance, meaning you could give yourself a sizable buffer from the outside. But the ceiling was low, and most of us had to duck our heads just to walk inside. We lined up along the walls opposite each other and sat so we didn’t have to crouch anymore. Simon and Vega sat next to each other, while Belenie and I did the same, knees touching. Belogon and his man, Derig, were still on their feet, scouting further into the cave to ensure we were the only occupants.

  “It’s perfect for the night, especially if it storms,” I said, my mind wandering to whether we needed to set up a watch schedule. Probably.

  Even this far from Rome, there was still one major concern on my mind—the Wanderer’s Guild. If any Wanderers found us asleep and cornered in this cave, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

  I took the first watch, though Derig offered dutifully to do it. I sat at the cave entrance, peering out between the large boulders as d
arkness fell on the Ends. Everyone except Belenie went straight to sleep, tired from the afternoon march into the wind. Belenie sat with me for a time, her hand on my knee, stroking my leg in her usual touchy manner that warmed me to the core.

  She lay her head on my shoulder and I thought she’d fallen asleep when she spoke: “Thank you for doing this,” she said.

  “For going to find Atticus’s father?”

  She laughed, music to my ears, though the joke had been unintentional. “No, silly. For supporting the Enders. For letting me tag along with your group. For being you.”

  “It’s nothing,” I said, waving away the compliment.

  “It’s not nothing,” she said, lifting her head from my shoulder. “While many humans might not hate our kind the way the Rising does, that doesn’t mean they’ll help us. Until you. And now you’ve managed to recruit hundreds of other humans who have just been waiting for a leader.”

  I wasn’t certain I deserved such accolades, but it still felt good hearing her say it. I respected her immensely, and not just because of her healing ability. Her sheer will to survive was awe inspiring. “Well, thank you for joining with us too. You’ve been my rock for a while now. Gehn’s fierce fighting ability is impressive and Hannah is scary sometimes. Adi is soft, gentle. But you…you are steady, even. An anchor in a storm.

  Just then, the wind blew into the cave, and a chill ran up my spine.

  Belenie gripped me tightly and I leaned into it, allowing our body warmth to meld together. “Your words fill me to overflowing,” she said.

  All felt right in the world, despite the chaotic weather outside and the war brewing across the Ends. Belenie yawned, the exhaustion seeming to catch her by surprise. “Sleep,” I said. “I will join you once I am relieved of watch duty.”

  She kissed me on the cheek softly, and then slipped away, slinking into the shadows to where she’d laid out her bedroll.

  More wind entered the cave and I wished I was warm beside Belenie’s soft body. It’s going to be a long night.