Venus City 1

by Tabitha Vale

  Still unable to see anything, she continued along whatever hall she was in, her hands her guide along the wall until she finally reached the main corridor, alight with lanterns. It was a little easier to find it with that weight on her back warming and chilling whenever she was about to take the right or wrong turns.

  Braya found the staircase that Asher had taken her up when she had come to have lunch with the Locers. At the top she encountered the same doorless, vaulted room as before.

  She started. There was a figure crouching down in front of the bowing statute, holding the jewelry box that she'd noticed last time. On the far side of the room were the rigs of Moon Tamer gear, covered in tarps.

  The figure rose, and Braya was about to turn and hide, but the man had already spotted her. It was Latham.

  “Braya, please,” Latham pleaded. He was clutching the jewelry box in one hand, and the other was outstretched, as if he meant to grab her. “Can I please explain myself?”

  Braya turned her back to him. “I think this situation is self-explanatory.” She crossed her arms, refusing to face him. Why had Asher been urging her here? What could he possibly want her to do...?

  “But, Braya,” he insisted. His voice was level, fluid—crisp like the pages of a new book. “It's not as simple as it appears. Please, give me a chance to explain this.”

  “The only thing I want to hear is that you're really not a Locer and you're going to help me get rid of Channing,” she ranted. “But since that's not the case, just leave me alone.” The sensation in her upper back was growing frantic, almost like a cat trying to scratch its way through a door—it felt like her flesh was being torn to ribbons from her shoulders to her waist. It was getting painful, but Braya had no idea what Asher meant by leading her to the chapel. Was she to intercept Latham? But what did he have that could be important to Channing? Channing must have needed Latham for something else. Latham was always his most trusted Locer.

  Braya turned around so that she could see Latham properly. Her eyes fell to the jewelry box in his hand, and she considered it.

  “But I am going to help you,” Latham was saying. His words took her off guard, and she caught his steady, earthy gaze in her own.

  “Help me?”

  “Let me explain,” he repeated, “And I'll give this box to you.” The second he uttered those words, his entire body convulsed. His legs buckled and he stumbled to the ground where he continued to tremor, as if he were cold. His hand clutching the jewelry box was growing white around the knuckles, and he let out a choked exhale as he struggled to move into a sitting position.

  Braya watched him in alarm. She felt compelled to stoop down and make sure he was all right, but she had to remind herself that he was a Locer and probably wouldn't show her the same courtesy. So she remained standing above him, observing uneasily as he steadied his breath. Latham's bulky arm was wrapped over his stomach, as if that were the source of his pain, but he couldn't manage to sit, so he settled on lying over the cracked stone, propped up on the forearm where the box rested under his hand.

  “Braya,” he gasped. She hated to see him so weak. “Channing,” he winced. “He trusts me the most. But isn't it ironic,” he exhaled painfully, “that he would,” a gulp, “use these safeguards? If I ever think of betray-betraying,” another gulp, “him, this intense pain comes over me,” he shuddered. “Channing, he's very clever with the,” he paused. “The Ephraim seedlings. And he has a lot.”

  Braya couldn't handle the pain riddling each breath he took, and sunk to her knees. The skin of her back was nearly swollen in pain, but she found little relief on the ground.

  “Don't talk too much, then,” Braya said, unsure of how she should comfort him. He could be going delusional from the pain. But he had to have thought of betraying Channing before the pain had ever occurred, right?

  “No,” he said forcefully, “I need to tell you. I can't have you—” he wheezed, “—have you hate me. Remember the rose?” He grimaced, crumpling flush against the stone. His arm had lost the strength to hold himself up. His hand twitched over its grip on the box, and his cheek pressed into a broken chunk of the stone ground, his glasses askew.

  “Yes,” she said, resisting the urge to fix his glasses for him.

  He didn't move his head as he spoke. He kept his gaze trained on her lap, which was in the direct line of his sight. “It was thornless,” he inhaled sharply. “Thornless,” he warbled on, “Symbol-symbolizes...love at first...sight. I chose that,” he swallowed hard, “on purpose, Braya. The first time I saw...saw you...I was in love. You...aggh...” he groaned, shrinking further in on himself.

  Braya felt helpless. She reached forward to touch his forehead—beads of perspiration soaked his hairline and were running down the side of his face. His skin was feverish and trembling, and Braya was beginning to feel scared for him. What kind of sick punishment had Channing set on him?

  “You're too lovely,” he murmured, his voice a fleeting whisper, “I was so,” he let out another loud, guttural groan, “so happy when I found...found out we were to be...to be married...” The room swelled with silence. Braya supposed he was regaining his strength, but this pause stretched on so long that she was struck with worry. She bent over and ran her hand over his cheek. He shuddered in response, exhaling. “I wanted...to give you a different flow-flower everyday. I knew so much,” he moaned, his leg jerking, “so much about flowers. Iris, lily, tulip, bellflower, aster, arbutus, begonia,” he groaned, “no, not...not begonia. I can't think...the pain...”

  “Begonia?” Braya asked, perturbed. That was the name of the song that Bellamine had written...her sister had known quite a bit about flowers back when she had tended the garden. That couldn't have been a misplaced title, then. “What does Begonia mean?” She probed, pulling him closer so that his head could rest in her lap. She stroked his hair back and urged him to answer her.

  “It means...means, beware,” he choked out.

  Braya felt something cold seize her chest. Why would her sister have written a song with a secret meaning of beware? The question chilled her to the bone.

  It took her a moment to realize that Latham was speaking again, and he was growing cold under her touch now, and his body was quivering worse than ever. “I hate-hated this city when...we first came here.” He choked for a good minute before continuing. “But after Chan-Channing made me an undercover Groom...I liked it. Braya...I liked it. Do you know the phrase,” he panted, “Ignorance is bliss? Those guys here. They're...so lucky, living the way...they do. I was envious.”

  Braya couldn't believe what she was hearing.

  “I liked...living in that disguise. Life...” he sighed, as if surrendering to whatever was ailing him, “was simple...”

  He was alarmingly calm after that. She couldn't feel anymore shaking, and he was no longer breathing in short raspy gasps. His eyes were shut and a tremor of fear shot down Braya's back at the realization that he must have passed out. She shook him, implored with him—she did whatever she could think of to revive him, but her efforts were futile. Her eyes fell on the box now completely free of his hold. She wouldn't feel right taking it from him like this, especially when he'd suffered the torment because he had wanted to help her. If only she could help him in return...

  Then it occurred to her. The boosters that Leraphone had attached the letter—she had them in her dress.

  Hurriedly retrieving them from her skirts, Braya plucked them from the square sheet of paper like stickers and began lining them along the side of his jaw and neck, starting from the area just in front of his ear and trailing down to his collar. She used five of them, lined unevenly and glowing against his tanned skin, and watched in awe as he began to stir. She admittedly didn't know as much as she should about health boosters—they were the only ones commercially sold for illnesses, and also used in hospitals for nearly everything a person could come down with—but she knew that one was usually enough for an average injury. Five, she hoped, would be strong enough
to overpower whatever it was that Channing had done to him.

  “Braya,” he said with the most tender smile. Her heart beat rapidly in her chest at that. “Sweet Braya...please. Take the box. Inside is a collection of Ephraim seedlings. There's about six of them,” he said, mustering the strength to sit up, but failing. “He's going to use them to perform a blood loyalty spell. Oh,” he gasped in alarm, “You didn't marry Page, did you? He meant to have you two married so the loyalty spell would work faster and stronger. Braya, you didn't marry him, did you?”

  Braya shook her head. “No, no. I didn't marry him.”

  “That's a relief,” he let out a puff of air. “I wish I could have married you...”

  Braya faltered. “What should I do with the seedlings?”

  “Don't let Channing get them,” said Latham. “He can still...can still probably transfer the Sare's blood recognition from you to him as long as the rest of your family members are dead...ah. Braya, he's strong, and he's clever. He's been studying and researching all he can about the Sares and seedlings. People have learned a substantial amount in the last ninety years since Camille discovered them, but there's still so much to know...”

  Braya reached for the box. “Is there anything else I should know?” As soon as her fingers flexed over the corners of the wooden container, the ache in her back instantly receded, and Braya couldn't hold back the tiny sigh of relief that followed.

  “You should go, quickly,” he said, clutching her hand that she had pressed against his cheek. “The Petti will explode,” he explained frantically. “Oh, I regret never telling you any of this before. I feel as if Venus City is my home now... you must know, though, that the Petti is too strong to collapse completely. All those boosters you've been planting around the city are meant to draw power from the Venus Sare and funnel it into one small section of the Petti, just beyond the field above us. Without those the Ephraim seedlings we transformed into bombs would never be capable of penetrating the barrier. Listen, it will only be open for about twenty seconds before the Petti recovers and seals again. Those twenty seconds are all that Channing needs, though.”

  Braya's eyes widened. “Those twenty seconds...what will happen, Latham?”

  “He has a large group of men out there, heavily armed, waiting to charge the instant that barrier is open.”

  Things are happening soon, very soon. It's coming. This had to be what Ness had been talking about up on the Petti...

  “When will he do that?” She asked, shaken.

  He shook his head. “I'm not sure. Any time.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Take the Moon Tamer gear,” he said, pointing to the rigs on the other side of the room. “There's a path of float platforms from here to the manor that we recently paved into the field. Just drag them there and have everyone use those as defense, if it comes to that. I was meant to take those for the Locers and the other men, but I think you could make better use of them.”

  “Latham,” she stared at him, overwhelmed with gratitude. “Thanks so much.”

  “I wish I was better so I could come along, but—”

  “Don't worry, I'll take care of this,” she said, placing a kiss on his forehead. It was amazing how certain she sounded, despite the fear knotted in her stomach. She figured she would have to find Asher and heal him with her boosters—assuming Channing had overcome him—otherwise she would have no hope as to know what to do.

  Braya helped Latham into a sitting position, and propped him up against a wall. He commented that he had ruined her beautiful wedding dress, but she noted that it was only going to get in her way. Despite how much she loved the dress, she knew it was necessary—she used a hand knife Latham had in his belt and sawed off most of the skirt. It was frayed and uneven, but she didn't have the time to make it neat. It wouldn't matter anyway—neat or not, it was still a ruined wedding dress.

  Latham sat with the remains of her skirt in his lap, stroking it affectionately as he threw out instructions to her on how to gather all of the gear and transport it.

  There were five rigs crowded against the far wall, all covered in black tarps. They were already secured together with lengths of tough cord, and all Braya had to do was drag the great mass of floating rigs with the remainder of the cord. Braya peaked under one of them—there were at least twenty sets of gear, meaning all together there was enough for around a hundred people. Would there be that many people sprinting through their blown Petti during that twenty seconds? She didn't know if that was possible.

  “It seems like it would be too heavy,” Latham said, adjusting his glasses as he watched her, “But they'll be as light as a feather with the Ephraim seedlings we added to give them weightlessness.”

  “How many seedlings do you people have?” She asked in exasperation. “Sounds like you waste them on any given inconvenience.”

  “There are different kinds,” Latham grinned. “There's no time to go into that now, though. Hurry, Braya. Hurry back to the manor and warn who you can. There's an alternative way out, by the way. Instead of going back downstairs and into the main corridor, go left out of this room and you'll find a ramp. It's all been paved over with float platforms so that those rigs will register.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  It wasn't hard to find the way. The ground gleamed in fresh, pearly tones where the platforms had been smoothed over the cracked and broken stone. It looked exactly like the Petti platforms they had raced over. With the jewelry box tucked under one arm and the cord in her free hand, Braya raced through the darkening corridor. It reached a point when all the lanterns had dispersed, and she was forced to walk until she reached the ramp, lest she trip over it and the rigs graze over her.

  The ramp wasn't far ahead. Once she'd reached it, Braya began running again, but she found the slightest resistance with the rigs when trying to lug them up a hill.

  When the ramp ended, she reached even ground again. She felt around for a door. It took her longer than she would have liked, and was forced to place the box down on the ground after minutes of fruitless searching.

  “Did they even add an effing door?” Braya grumbled to herself, sweat trickling over her brow.

  She found it a few minutes later. She burst through it, panting and out of breath. She stood there for a couple moments, hands on her knees, bent over, to catch her breath.

  A low rumble far in the distance caught her attention. It was behind her, in the direction where the horizon stretched beyond the field and where she assumed the Petti ended somewhere. Braya turned as the sound grew. She hadn't heard anything like it—a cross between a dog's guttural growl and a car's engine, all magnified to a larger level. And it kept growing—it literally seemed to be mounting higher—so much that Braya imagined if it had a physical trace of color, it might be like the scene of a sun rising in the morning, casting the sky in vibrant pastels.

  The sound was tapering off, but Braya sensed it wasn't the end.

  As if on cue, an explosion of red and orange bloomed across the horizon and shook the ground. Braya stumbled against the small doorway she'd come from—the other abandoned shack she'd spotted just earlier—and watched in glamored terror as the sky cracked. Tiny spider lines like the ones that had sunk into the objects she'd implanted with the boosters scuttled across the blue sky, as if it were a surface of fine china. A horrible, gut-wrenching whine followed the explosion, and then a line of black—like a march of ants—was streaming from the smoke.... the smoke that furled away from a gaping hole in the horizon.

  It was exactly as Latham had said. The Petti was breached, and those ants—no, those weren't ants, they were Channing's men—were flooding into Venus City.

  With a little cry, Braya dashed back through the door and collected the box and the cord. With one more glance toward the shattered sky, she saw that it was already mending itself. The cracks were disappearing, as if sewn up like new, and the hole was shrinking.

  It didn't matter. The damage had been done.
>
  ~Chapter 21: Mother Ophelia~

  Braya ran to the manor in record time. At the door in the hedge, she glanced behind her to see if the flood of men were anywhere near yet. It seemed they hadn't even reached the shacks, which meant they were not enhanced with any sort of seedlings. Were they meant to go down and meet Latham to get the Moon Tamer gear? But Latham had already said they were fully armed...

  Shaking those useless questions away, Braya tugged the rigs through the door—it was lucky the door was so wide, but Braya figured the Locers had planned all these things down to the smallest detail—and continued across the estate; dashing through shorter hedges, skirting around gazebos, nearly tripping into ponds, and crisscrossing around the other two manors before she reached Heartland. Those Locers sure knew how to create a bothersome path, but she figured the white metal in the ground had to be placed in the most discreet places. She hadn't even noticed them on her way out of the manor before.

  Upon reaching the back stairwell she'd escaped through, Braya was surprised to see a long line of Brides and Grooms evacuating from the sixth floor landing. Some seemed frantic—mostly the Brides—while the others were merely baffled.

  Spotting her, the process immediately halted and all eyes locked onto her and the mysterious floating rigs that she was pulling.

  “What's going on?” Braya asked the Grooms at the foot of the stairs.

  “Mother Ophelia told us to evacuate,” one of them responded while glancing around her to peak a glimpse at what she might be hiding under the tarps.

  “Mother Ophelia?” Braya asked in surprise. “Did she say why?”

  Another of the Grooms shrugged. “We heard a loud commotion, lots of shouting and screaming. Then she came into our lesson room and told us to come down these stairs.”