Eve of Destruction

by C. E. Stalbaum

Her brow furrowed. “But she told you?”

  He nodded and swallowed heavily. “And she had to know whatever she told me would make it back to the Enclave. I never understood that. I still don’t.”

  “Maybe she hoped they would help her somehow,” Jean suggested. “That they would get off their asses and do something useful for a change.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so,” Maltus said. “I started to wonder if she did it for another reason—something she didn’t tell me about. Her visions might have revealed something else she didn’t share.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her. She was usually a few steps ahead of the rest of us, even Simon.” Jean smiled and put her hands on the desk. “It used to drive me crazy. We ladies are quite competitive, if you didn’t know.”

  He grinned back. “Right now it’s just frustrating. For all the things Tara knew, I still can’t believe a few of Simon’s thugs took her down.”

  Jean’s smile vanished. “You think she let them?”

  “I can’t see why,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense. A lot of things don’t make sense right now. I still can’t believe Eve is the Avenshal.”

  Jean’s face hardened, and she reached out to touch his hand. “There’s another possibility, you know.”

  Maltus took in a deep breath. Yes, there was. It was just one he hadn’t been willing to deal with—and still wasn’t.

  “Tara could have been wrong,” he muttered. “About everything.”

  “You said she turned away from the Goddess after she left Simon. Maybe she never truly came back.”

  “She never turned away from Edeh,” Maltus said flatly. “She turned away from herself. There’s a difference.”

  Jean held her olive eyes on his but didn’t reply. He knew exactly what she was thinking even if she didn’t say it—perhaps the Goddess had turned away from Tara. Perhaps she had so twisted her gift that Edeh never forgave her, and the visions she received were some type of special torment inflicted upon one who had done so much damage to the world and to the Fane.

  Maltus pulled away his hand and sighed. No, those were his thoughts, not Jean’s. He was the bitter old man who had long since lost faith in almost everything. She was an Edehan priestess, and she believed in the Goddess’s boundless forgiveness.

  “I should be able to get tickets to Vaschberg the day after tomorrow,” he told her eventually. “But first I need to meet with a few people just to make sure everything is in order.”

  “I hope the Enclave lets you go, Glenn,” Jean said gravely. “Once you turn away from them…”

  “I’m more worried about you being bored,” he replied, waving away her concern. “There isn’t a lot to do in the house.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “What makes you think I’m going to sit here all day? I haven’t been to Selerius in five years. I plan to shop.”

  He chuckled despite himself. “Sounds like a good idea.”

  “You do have a tub here, don’t you?” she asked as she stood. “I want to take a bath and then go to bed.”

  “Upstairs,” he told her. “I’ll help you get your things into the guest room.”

  “Oh, I know,” Jean said coyly. “You’re going to make me breakfast, too. Don’t think for a moment your penance is over.”

  Maltus smiled despite himself. “This way.”

  ***

  From the moment she’d first heard about this trip, Amaya had assumed it would be disastrous. At best, she figured maybe a dozen of the almost xenophobic Highlanders would actually come to listen to Chaval speak, and at worst it was possible a horde of them would show up to drive them off—possibly violently.

  At no point had she expected this.

  The wide, two-story logger’s cabin could have probably housed every single Highlander who called this village home, but it wasn’t even close to being large enough to accommodate the throng that had shown up. Their carriage had been accosted before they’d actually made it into the village, but not in the way Amaya had expected—the woodsmen hadn’t been brandishing bows in one hand and shovels in the other. Instead, they’d come with questions, and congenial ones at that. They had gone out of their way to make Chaval’s envoy feel welcome.

  Amaya couldn’t understand it. These people had an independent streak that would make an Ebaran nationalist blush. After Arkadian independence, the Highlanders had driven out the magi and Edehan clerics and essentially created their own little province up here in the mountains. They still voted in elections, obviously, but that and a pittance of taxes was about the limit of their interaction with the Arkadian government.

  It took her an entire day of schmoozing to finally figure it out. All Chaval had done was turn their isolationism into a weapon. He had sold himself as an outsider, a man willing to go after the corruption of the status quo and bring real change to the country. It wasn’t all just pandering, either—from a certain perspective, his credentials as a rebel were entirely earned. He hadn’t merely promised change, after all: he had delivered it all across western Arkadia. He had fought the system and won.

  What these people thought they were going to get out of Industrialization, of course, she hadn’t a clue. Chaval conveniently never mentioned the conscription of his urban masses into factory drollery or the systematic clearing of wildlife that his machines entailed. Instead he showed them new weapons they could use to defend their homes from the “magi elites,” and they loved him for it.

  “Soroshi,” a male voice said from behind her.

  Amaya turned. She was standing on deck outside the cabin about twenty meters from Chaval as he spoke with group after group of Highlanders from other villages. The man walking towards her was one of Chaval’s other guards, and from his expression she could tell there was something wrong.

  “Problem?” she asked.

  He nodded, putting his hand on her arm and gently leading her away from the nearby locals. Chaval had instructed all of his people to treat her “like a lady” whenever she was in the view of the public, and in general they were pretty good about staying in character.

  “I just got a report from Lawson,” he said, his voice hushed. Like many of the Dusties, he looked about as comfortable in a suit as a wild vretarg, but at least his other mannerisms were reasonably controlled.

  “And what did he say?” she asked as she faked a sip at a glass of wine. It was so screlling cold up here in the mountains that the glass was like ice on her fingers.

  “They’re going to leave Cadotheia.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I told Chaval that they’d leave as soon as they could. Do you know when?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “There’s a freight rail with a few passenger cars leaving just after noon.”

  Amaya resisted the urge to swear. Chaval had ignored her warnings, and now they were stuck up here in the mountains two hundred kilometers from civilization.

  “Give me a minute,” she murmured, and made her way over to their boss. She slipped behind him easily and managed to catch the corner of his eye.

  “One moment, gentlemen,” Chaval said, stepping away from the gathering of idiots. He kept a smile on his face, but she could see the annoyance in his eyes. He hated being interrupted. “What’s the problem?”

  “They’re fleeing the city,” Amaya told him. “Just like I said they would.”

  His lip twitched slightly, but otherwise his cool expression remained intact. “Earlier than I expected…”

  “I could send orders to stop them,” she suggested. “Though I’m not sure our people stand a chance against DeShane’s new protector.”

  “They don’t,” he said, a smile forming on his lips. “But you do.”

  She grunted. “Our little surprise isn’t going to work if I’m not there personally. Unless you have a lot more of the stuff than you let on.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t…yet,” he said. “But the good news is that getting you a few hundred kilometers in…oh, fourteen hours or so…isn’t as hard as it
sounds.”

  “You want me to take the Zefrim?” she asked, though of course she already knew the answer.

  “It will be ready by the time you get back to the landing site,” he told her. “I’ll have it loop back tomorrow and pick the rest of us up. We might even be back in time for dinner.”

  “I just hope this surprise works as well as you think it will.”

  “It will,” he assured her, his smile widening. “Even the Vakari won’t be able to stop you.”

  Amaya nodded and turned to walk away. A part of her actually hoped their information was wrong, that maybe DeShane would be on an earlier train and escape. Chaval needed a loss, a blow to deflate his ego. Ever since he’d read that journal his arrogance had swelled out-of-control, and sooner or later it was going to cost him—and maybe the rest of them, too.

  But really, that wasn’t what she was worried about. The thought of DeShane actually turning into the weapon he wanted was what had kept Amaya from sleeping more than a few hours each of the last few nights. The thought of the absolute horror the girl would unleash, and how Chaval would benefit from it…

  Amaya took a deep breath and made her way to the horses. She might be damning the world by leaving DeShane alive, but at least she could do it a small favor by ridding it of a Vakari.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The train wasn’t exactly what Eve would call luxury comfort, but it was the only one headed to Vaschberg today and neither she nor any of the others had been willing to endure Cadotheia any longer. Which was ridiculous, in some ways, since realistically the trip could have been a whole lot worse.

  They hadn’t ended up facing any of the dangers she’d anticipated. Chaval had completely left them alone, and the gun-toting Dusty thugs she’d been expecting to swarm the streets like locusts hadn’t existed at all. As it turned out, the average Cadotheia citizen was more concerned about making a living and feeding their families than harassing a few random magi and validating their preconceptions.

  They’d also made some serious inroads as a group for the first time. They had recovered the journal, they had finally gotten some answers from Maltus, and even their meeting with Polard had been at least modestly informative. All in all, they had very little to complain about and a lot to be grateful for.

  And yet despite all of that, Eve could feel the collective sigh of relief from the entire party the moment the train started moving away. She understood perfectly; just knowing they were getting out of here was like an enormous weight being lifted from her shoulders.

  Then she thought about her mother’s vision again, and all the weight came crashing right back down upon her.

  She sighed and tried to reposition herself on the stiff wooden bench. She sat next to Zach, and they were squeezed so tightly together that it was difficult to even cross her legs. The other three—Aram, Danev, and Shaedra—all sat facing them on an adjacent bench. As a whole the group had barely spoken since leaving the hotel.

  That was fine with her. Last night’s conversation with Maltus had left her drained, and right now more than anything she just wanted to go home, curl up in her bed, and forget this entire trip had ever happened.

  If only it was that easy.

  “At least this is a short trip,” Zach muttered as he shuffled his arms together.

  “Relatively speaking,” Danev grunted. The big man was obviously even more uncomfortable than the rest of them squished together so tightly on his bench. “I’d almost prefer a carriage.”

  Eve nodded and opened the pack sitting in her lap. Her mother’s journal sat there right at the top, taunting her each and every time she looked at it. She hadn’t touched it since yesterday afternoon, and she didn’t want to now, either. So far, all it had brought her was misery.

  But it wasn’t fair to the others to leave it alone. They still hoped the journal might have a miracle solution hidden somewhere within its words. She’d only skimmed most of the last forty pages or so, and now was as good a time as any to finish the job.

  Eve cracked it open and flipped towards the back where she’d stopped. A moment later she realized there was something wrong with the pages—two of them were stuck together.

  “Something wrong?” Shaedra asked, one eyebrow cocked.

  “I’m…not sure,” Eve murmured, rubbing her fingers along the edge of the pages. “I think two of the pages are glued together or something.”

  The Vakari frowned as she squinted at it. “It’s a spell, but the magic is faint.”

  Eve glanced down to the page again. She thought about weaving to see if she could detect the lingering Fane energy but decided against it. Too many sets of eyes were on them here, and too many ears could be listening to whatever they had to say…

  “It’s easy to fix,” Shaedra said, reaching out towards the pages. Eve didn’t even have time to flinch away before a wisp of Fane energy danced off the other woman’s fingertips and flickered across the paper. A second later the pages neatly came apart.

  “Have a care,” Aram warned coldly, glancing about to see if any of the other passengers had seen the spell. “This isn’t the place for that.”

  Shaedra ignored him. Her eyes remained fixed on Eve. “What does it say?”

  Eve looked back down at the journal. The script on this particular page was unlike the rest. It wasn’t the same language; the entire alphabet was completely different. She recognized a few of the symbols, though, and an old memory stirred in her thoughts. It was something she hadn’t thought of in a long, long time…

  “Zach, do you remember when my dad used to try and teach us ancient Agean?” she asked him in a hushed whisper.

  His brow furrowed and he nodded slowly. “Yeah, vaguely. We were what, six?”

  “Thereabouts. He insisted it would be important if we ever wanted to be multilingual. Agean had lots of basic ideograms incorporated in many modern languages, just not Esharian.”

  “I don’t remember the reason,” he admitted. “I just know I was bored.”

  “Well, do you recognize this alphabet?”

  His cheek twitched. “That’s definitely Agean. I couldn’t tell you anything else about it, though.”

  “Mom used to say dad was one of the only people in the country who could speak it. You know how he was—he spoke ten languages before he was fifteen.”

  “So why would…?” he trailed off as his eyes flicked to Shaedra then back to Eve. “He taught your mom too, right?”

  “I’m sure he did. But why would she write a one-page entry in Agean and then hide it behind a spell?”

  “A message,” he reasoned. “Either for him or for you?”

  “So what does it say?” Shaedra asked as she leaned forward.

  “I have no idea,” Eve said with a sigh.

  Zach put his finger on one of the symbols. “I’m pretty sure that’s your name. Do you remember when he had that piece of parchment with ‘Evelyn’ written in all kinds of languages on his office wall? I know I’ve seen that before.”

  “So it is a message for me,” Eve breathed, her stomach suddenly twisting into knots. “And I can’t even read it.”

  Zach glanced up. “I don’t suppose you can—”

  He cut himself off when he realized Shaedra wasn’t looking at them anymore. Instead she was staring out of the window, squinting as if trying to make out something in the distance.

  “Trouble?” Aram asked.

  “Someone is approaching the train,” she said distantly. Her eyes nearly rolled back into her head.

  Zach shook his head. “How can you tell that? There’s no way you can see through that smudge on the glass—”

  “I don’t need to see what I can feel,” she told him, turning to Aram and sharing a meaningful glance with the Eclipsean.

  His face hardened and his body visibly tensed in response. “How many riders?”

  “A dozen, give or take.”

  “Riders?” Eve stammered. “Chasing down a train?”

  “Intercepting,
” Shaedra corrected, “and I doubt they’re here looking for drakes.”

  Eve quickly buried the journal back inside her satchel. Was this Chaval? Was he finally going to make an attempt to get this journal back? Perhaps he just wanted to kill her like before…

  Gunfire thundered outside the window, easily audible over the rumbling of the train. Then the screams of terrified passengers drowned everything else out. Some huddled in their chairs while others risked cautious glances out the window to locate the source. Eve, for her part, remained locked in place. Her thoughts flashed back to the night at the Calio, to the bullets blasting into their room. Anger had freed her there, given her the strength to move and function…

  “A train heist,” Zach muttered, reaching into his jacket and putting a hand on his revolver. “You have to be screlling kidding me.”

  “He doesn’t want us to leave,” Danev said softly, his momentary doze immediately forgotten. He glanced to his bodyguard. “Deal with them.”

  Aram was already on his feet. He pulled a pistol from a holster Eve didn’t even know he had and ignored the terrified shouts of the other passengers as he sprinted towards the back of the car.

  “You’re not going alone,” Shaedra grumbled after him. “In fact, you should really wait here.”

  Aram didn’t even glance back at her as he pushed his way into the other car. Shaedra just grunted and shook her head.

  “Typical,” she muttered, and then started to follow him.

  Zach stood and grabbed her arm. “Where are you going?”

  She glanced back at him. “Where do you think? Outside.”

  “On a moving train?” Eve asked. “Are you crazy?”

  “Sometimes,” Shaedra murmured, eyeing Zach up and down. “You were a soldier, right, kid?”

  Zach nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then keep them safe. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Let her go,” Danev said, placing a restraining arm on Zach’s. “The rest of us should stick together in case we get boarded.”

  Zach scowled like he was about to protest, but then sighed in resignation. It was just as well, since Shaedra was already gone.