Eve of Destruction

by C. E. Stalbaum

Conspiracy nuts, especially those with connections to the magi, had been throwing around that explanation ever since the massacre. It hadn’t gained any real traction with the public, and actually it might have even done the opposite—it just seemed like a quick and easy way for the magi to deflect blame onto someone else.

  Danev had never personally bought into it, but he had to admit that sacrificing an island to accomplish one’s political goals would hardly stand out as a unique atrocity in history, as sick as that might have been. Many kings and warlords through the ages had done worse.

  “Venn said he was hiring magi,” Danev murmured. “You think he plans to use them to frame the Enclave?”

  “If it worked, you can imagine the effect it would have.”

  Danev shook his head and leaned back against the overly-stiff seat cushion. “It’s too far-fetched. Even the new Simon has limits.”

  “Perhaps, but like you said, there aren’t many alternatives.”

  The illusionist sighed and pulled on his mustache. “Perhaps Eve will have learned something useful.”

  “You mean other than the fact she is the Avenshal?”

  “Now that,” Danev said, “is even more far-fetched. I have a hard time picturing that girl hurting a roach.”

  “Maybe that’s the point.”

  Danev sighed and glanced up at the evening’s half-moon. It was covered behind clouds and smoke like it often was in Cadotheia. He wondered dimly if the locals considered that a good omen. A fair number of Edehan sects believed the moon represented the lingering gaze of Abalor. During a full moon cycle, it was said that his power was greatest. By his rough estimate, that would almost perfectly align with the forthcoming election.

  “Besides,” Aram added into the stillness, “you didn’t see her at the Calio.”

  “She didn’t actually do anything, as I recall. Shaedra dealt with the assassins.”

  “She wove a spell with far more power than a krata should have been able to muster.”

  “Tara probably taught it to her.”

  “And violated the sanctity of the Oath Rituals?”

  Danev grunted. “You act like it’s unheard of. I told you before how much more we knew back in school than we were supposed to.”

  “That was a long time ago, and the rules are even stricter now. But my point remains: it could be a sign.”

  “Or you could be reading too much into it,” Danev countered. “Either way, there’s nothing to do about it until we get back.”

  Aram didn’t reply, and Danev let the matter rest. Despite having left the Eclipse behind, the bodyguard had been thoroughly indoctrinated into their way of thinking, and that kind of behavioral branding didn’t go away easily. He’d been taught to loathe Defilers, just as they all had, but he’d also been taught that even subtle violations of protocol—such as a parent teaching their child particular weaving techniques before the Oath Rituals—were unconscionable.

  He might have been right, but at the moment all Danev could think about was getting out of this Fane-forsaken city. They had long-since overstayed their welcome.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was late evening by the time Aram and Danev returned from their excursion out into the city, and Zach could tell from tight expressions on both their faces that it hadn’t gone as well as they’d hoped. Not that he’d expected otherwise. From the moment Danev had first mentioned the idea, Zach had known coming to Cadotheia would be at best a waste of time and at worst a disaster. So far he would peg the trip somewhere between the two.

  They were all alive, at least, but they still hadn’t gotten an answer to the question that had brought them here in the first place: why had Tara DeShane been killed? Even her journal hadn’t helped with that yet, and worse, it had presented an entirely new problem—one he fully admitted he had no idea how to deal with.

  He tossed a furtive glance to Eve as she walked into the adjacent suite and sat down to hear what the others had to say. The two of them had spent the last few hours playing cards and generally trying to ignore the grim prophecies from the journal, and it seemed to have helped her a little. She was taking this about as well as could be expected, but he continued to try and convince her it was all a mistake. Danev and the others could talk all they wanted about Tara DeShane and her great power, but Zach had basically lived with the woman since he was four. He refused to believe she’d been carrying that burden alone all those years.

  They were still missing something. With luck, perhaps Mr. Maltus would finally reveal what it was.

  “I assume you didn’t learn anything useful,” Shaedra commented as the two men hung up their coats and sat down. She stood propped against the far wall, arms folded across her chest. Zach wondered dimly if she had been standing in that same pose ever since they banished her from the other room.

  “I’m not certain yet,” Danev admitted, dropping a large metal box down on the floor. Aram had lugged in two similar containers of his own. “It will take a while to sift through all of this information.”

  “I hope you don’t plan on doing that here,” Zach said. “We need to get out of this drekhole.”

  “We’ll take the afternoon train to Vaschberg tomorrow,” Danev told him. His eyes flicked to Shaedra. “For now, I was hoping you could finally arrange that conversation with Glenn.”

  “He should be back at this point, assuming his trip went as planned,” she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small metal bracelet with a crystal set into the middle of it. “It only carries voice, unfortunately—the Enclave doesn’t hand out full projection stones without a fight.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Eve said softly. “I just want to talk to him.”

  Shaedra nodded and touched the crystal. It hummed for a moment before slowly floating out of the metal band. It sat there glowing for almost a minute before flashing once.

  “I was just about to contact you,” Maltus’s voice came back. “I take it everything went as planned? You have the journal?”

  “I do,” Shaedra confirmed, “and quite a bit more than that. I brought you an audience.”

  The crystal remained silent for several seconds. “Evelyn?”

  Eve licked at her lips and leaned forward. “Mr. Maltus.”

  His relieved sigh was audible despite the subtle distortion in the sound. “Thank the Goddess you’re all right. Is Zachary with you?”

  “I am,” Zach said. “And so is an old friend of yours.”

  “It’s been a long time, Glenn,” Danev said.

  “So it has,” Maltus murmured. “I’m glad the children were able to find you, Gregori. I’m sorry to have dropped all of this in your lap, but—”

  “You lied,” Eve interrupted. Her hands were balled into fists on her lap. “You lied to us.”

  Zach thought he could hear their old neighbor sucking in a deep breath, but it might have been his imagination. Still, he could almost visualize the other man bracing himself for what was to come.

  “Yes,” Maltus admitted. “And for that, I am sorry. I just hope you’ll give me the chance to explain.”

  “First you need to know what’s happened,” Shaedra cut in. “Chaval left the book unattended inside his fortress. He wasn’t even there.”

  “That’s…curious.”

  “We suspect he knew we would come after it,” Danev said. “And as best we can figure, he wanted us to have it. We aren’t sure why just yet.”

  “A few pages are missing, but otherwise it’s intact,” Shaedra added. “He made sure to leave all the visions about Eve—the ones you suspected would be in there.”

  “I see,” Maltus replied softly. “So I take it you’ve read over them.”

  Shaedra glanced over to Eve. “I haven’t, but she has.”

  “You never told me,” Eve murmured. “You never said anything about it, and neither did mom. Why?”

  “It’s…complicated,” he managed. “I’m afraid it’s something we need to discuss in person. Otherwise—”


  “Tell me!” Eve screamed as she abruptly lurched to her feet. She glared daggers at the crystal for a long moment, her entire body shuddering with rage, before finally slumping back into the chair. Her voice returned to a whisper. “Please tell me.”

  “She wanted to protect you,” Maltus said softly. “She made a choice. It might not have been the right one; I don’t know. But you need to understand that she didn’t believe it.”

  Zach frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “She didn’t think the vision was set in stone,” he explained. “She had a unique perspective on the future, I guess you could say. She believed the Goddess spoke to her for a reason; she thought she was supposed to change what she saw. The problem was that she didn’t trust herself.”

  Danev nodded as he pulled at his moustache. “You mean after Simon—after Steamworks.”

  “I assume you already told them about it.”

  “They know,” he confirmed, glancing between Eve and Zach.

  “Your mother believed she’d misused the gift she’d been given,” Maltus explained. “She thought she’d been shown this vision of the future—this world of Industry and machines—in order to bring it about.”

  “Because it fit in with what your group was trying to achieve,” Zach reasoned. “You thought the country was going to need that change to survive.”

  Maltus sighed. “Yes. It was much later when she realized she might have misinterpreted it all. She thought perhaps she was supposed to prevent this ‘Dusty revolution’ from happening. Instead she unleashed it upon the world.”

  “That’s what drove her into isolation, then,” Danev said. “That’s why she left—why she ran so far from Simon and Valmeri.”

  “It’s also why she turned away from her gift for many years,” Maltus continued. “She stopped having visions entirely for nearly a decade, but then shortly after you were conceived, Evelyn, they returned. It was…not an easy thing to handle.”

  “She still could have told me,” Eve insisted. “We could have figured it out together.”

  “There were times when she wanted to, believe me. But she was convinced that nothing good would come of it—at least not when you were young. Instead she did everything she could to make sure it would never come to pass.”

  “Not everything,” Shaedra pointed out. “She could have killed her.”

  Everyone in the room turned to scowl at her at once, but the Vakari didn’t seem to notice.

  “She was not going to harm her own daughter,” Maltus said coldly. “That was never an option.”

  “So now others suffer instead,” Shaedra replied. “What a courageous choice.”

  Zach shot her a glare that could have melted steel. “That explains her mother’s choice, but what about you? Why didn’t you say anything? And why did you send this thing to follow us.”

  “The Enclave has always been interested in Tara,” Maltus said. “They sent me to keep an eye on her for many years, but they never chose to take action until recently.”

  “Which I assume coincides with Chaval’s sudden rise in popularity,” Danev reasoned. “They realized that this civil war Tara had warned them about was much closer than they wanted to admit—and that meant her daughter had suddenly become a threat.”

  “Those in the Magister’s Council who believed in Tara’s power fear that her prophecy is nearing fruition. They wish to take action.”

  “In other words, they want to kill me,” Eve rasped. A tear streaked down her left cheek. “So you sent an assassin to do it for you.”

  “I sent Shaedra to buy us time,” Maltus insisted. “The Enclave believes she is in position to finish the job if they order it. But that isn’t going to happen. We’re going to get you out of there—we’re going to figure out a way to fix this.”

  Danev sighed. “Well, whatever your reasons, Glenn, right now I’m more worried about how the Enclave will respond to Simon. Tara’s vision hinges on the start of a civil war between the Dusties and the magi, and it seems like that time is fast approaching.”

  “The Enclave will react,” Maltus told them, “but I don’t know how just yet. I’ve been subtly excluded from their recent deliberations.”

  Shaedra’s eyes narrowed. “So they realize you aren’t going to listen to them. That means they won’t rely on you to get the job done—they’ll have someone else nearby, maybe even another Vakari.”

  “It’s possible,” he conceded. “In any event, I’m going to try and stall them a bit more before leaving. I can meet you all there in a few days.”

  “We’re heading back to Vaschberg tomorrow,” Danev said. “Meet us there if you can.”

  “I will, and then we can…talk,” Maltus managed, his voice slipping just slightly. “I tried to speak with Karyn earlier, to convince her to help us, but she’s too intertwined in politics. She and Janel are set to meet with Chaval in Cadotheia later this week.”

  Danev frowned. “What for?”

  “I’m not sure. I told her not to go, but she thinks she might be able to negotiate with him, to prevent a conflagration with the Dusties. That’s all she would tell me.”

  “We spoke to Jack, and he wasn’t much help, either. He’s working for Chaval directly.”

  Maltus sighed. “I had wondered about that.”

  “So what of Jean?”

  “I convinced her to come with me and help,” Maltus said. “It isn’t much, but at least three of us are better than nothing.”

  Danev idly tapped his cane. “It will certainly be an interesting reunion, that’s for sure.” He paused briefly. “I’m not exactly sure what you’re expecting, Glenn. If you defy the Enclave, they won’t just let you go.”

  “It doesn’t matter. This is bigger than they are. If we can do anything to stop a war, we have to try. And we need to keep Eve safe. That’s our top priority.”

  Zach swiveled his withering glare on the crystal. “It’s good you started caring about that now.”

  “I have always cared, Zachary,” Maltus replied with surprising force. “I care about both of you, and I will do everything in my power to keep you safe. I’ll explain the rest when I get there, but for now you just have to trust me.”

  Zach shook his head and glanced to Eve. She didn’t say anything; she just remained tucked in a ball in the chair.

  “I look forward to seeing both of you, then,” Danev said. “I just hope you’re not too late.”

  “So do I,” Maltus murmured, and the crystal fell silent. Its inner glow faded, and it sunk back inside the metal band.

  “The Enclave will know he’s turned on them,” Aram commented after a moment. “And they will make preparations.”

  Danev nodded. “Glenn knows that better than anyone, I’m sure. He’ll figure something out.”

  Aram didn’t reply, but from his expression Zach didn’t think he believed it.

  “In any event,” Danev went on, “I think we all have some reading to do. And we should get to sleep early—the only train running tomorrow is a freight rail. It won’t be particularly comfortable.”

  “It’s heading out of here,” Zach muttered, glancing out the closest window. “That’s all I care about.”

  ***

  “I used to wonder what you’d done with yourself all this time,” Jean Lashowe commented as she ran her fingers across the bookshelf on the eastern wall of Maltus’s study. It was stocked with philosophy books ranging from Aldaris to Zulgrich—the classics, so to speak, and volumes he admittedly hadn’t cracked open in probably twenty years. “You never could stay out of trouble.”

  Maltus sighed as the sending stone went silent. He hadn’t intended for Jean to hear all that, at least not like this, but as usual Shaedra’s timing was less-than-convenient. But he was going to have to tell Jean everything sooner or later, and for her sake he might as well do it while she still had a chance to run away.

  “I’ve made some mistakes,” he murmured. “I wanted—”

  She raised a hand. “You don’t h
ave to justify it. We never agreed on the Enclave before and I don’t think that’s going to change now. But it doesn’t matter. Like you said, this goes beyond old arguments. You want to keep Tara’s daughter safe, and so do I. Let’s stay focused on the present.”

  He nodded. Eventually, he knew, they would have that talk. The olds wounds that had driven them apart decades ago would tear open once more, and maybe she would storm away again, leaving him to wonder if he was a fool not to try and stop her.

  Or maybe they’d bled enough for one lifetime. Maybe the wounds had healed, and scars were more durable than he thought.

  “Too bad about Jack,” she said after a moment, dropping into the chair on the other side of the table and crossing her legs. “I completely lost touch with him—I wasn’t even sure he was still alive.”

  “He’s lived in Cadotheia with Simon for years, but I’m not sure what he actually does there,” Maltus said.

  “It was good to hear Gregori’s voice, at least.” She smiled tiredly. “The last time I saw him he was begging me for advice on how to approach Tara. He knew she and Simon were just about spent.”

  Maltus grunted. “Well, at least it seems like Tara was right to trust him. I have no idea why she wanted Eve to go to him, but perhaps she foresaw something.”

  “On the ride here you mentioned that Tara wrote just about everything down,” Jean said. “Did you ever read any of it?”

  “Some, but not all,” he told her. “When I still lived there, she told me everything—at least, I think she did. But you have to remember, she went nearly an entire decade without a single vision at one point.”

  “After she turned away from Simon.”

  “Right. Then after she got pregnant it started again, and she told me the visions were a lot more…focused. She would have the same dreams over and over again, like recurring nightmares.”

  Jean shook her head. “I can’t even imagine. To know what she knew about her gift, and to have it turn against her own daughter…”

  “She never told Paul,” Maltus said. “Her husband, I mean. He never knew about it.”