The priest broke off suddenly, and Pax looked up. “What is it?”
Carrick shook his head. “I thought I saw something—like a beam of light. It’s gone now. I think I imagined it.”
“Stay there,” commanded Pax as he walked over to join him. “Move your hands back to where they were when you saw the light.”
The priest slid his hands slowly, and after a moment he said, “There!”
Pax blinked at the wall. “I didn’t see anything. Do it again.”
“There.”
He stared at the priest’s hand. He very much doubted the man was hallucinating. Despite being nearsighted Carrick might be more sensitive to movement or changes in light.
“Move your hand,” said Pax. The priest complied, and he placed his own hand in the same position. “Tell me if you see it again.”
“Yes. It … it’s illuminating that mark on your arm. Now it’s gone.”
Clever. Pax growled, slapping his palm against the wall. No wonder they hadn’t bothered to secure the temple better. They’d all gone underground.
He stared up at the ceiling, thinking. They hadn’t searched the upper floors yet. The temple felt empty, but it was possible some of the disciples were still inside. They’d have to try. Otherwise they could waste a huge amount of time looking for another way to open the door.
Unless …
He glanced at Carrick. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Back to the alley. We need a key.”
* * *
“We’re not all like him.”
Micah’s voice interrupted Asha’s thoughts, bringing her back to the present moment in time to step over a large piece of broken pottery.
“Not all like who?”
“The amir’s son.” Micah glanced back at her briefly. “Did he attack you?”
She hesitated, despite the fact there was no reason for her to shield Pax from this man’s disapproval. But telling him didn’t feel right. Especially in light of the rumor about Pax and the priestess. It painted a picture that didn’t really fit Pax.
Which isn’t my concern.
“I was spared that … affliction,” said Micah, apparently taking her silence as an affirmative.
“It’s more complicated than him attacking me,” she said. “I ran from him. He thought I might be a threat to him. He grabbed me and I fought him. Then something changed. He—” She shook her head. “Nothing happened. I was able to get away. After that he ordered his ship to protect me.”
“Really?” Micah turned and reached for her hand as she started over a two-foot-high pile of loose rubble. The shoes from the temple were more practical than Iris’s slippers, but not by much. As he lifted his arm, the wide cuff of his shirt slipped back to reveal a row of spikes, smaller and softer-looking than the priestess’s.
“He has more control than he thinks he does,” she continued, concentrating on her footing. “He didn’t want to hurt me.”
Micah eyed her curiously as she alighted on solid ground beside him. His eyes moved to the cast on her wrist, which she’d all but forgotten. “You don’t hate him.”
It was odd to hear it spoken aloud, but of course it was true. She didn’t hate him, enemy or no. “He brought me here against my will,” she acknowledged. “But since then he’s done all he could to protect me. Even from his own family.”
“But you ran from him.”
“I had to if I didn’t want to end up in the Alhambra. And he would never have helped me find my father in Al Campo. What excuse could he have given the amir for that?”
Micah nodded. “Not one the amir would accept. I’ve wondered about what really happened between you. I followed you into that alley because I sensed the tension. I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
Asha glanced at him, surprised. “Not because you wanted to recruit us?”
He laughed. “We do a lot of that sort of work, but no.”
“Thank you. That was kind.”
“Well.” He turned then, and continued down the corridor. Her gratitude seemed to have made him uncomfortable.
“Did you know that I was human?” she asked. “Pax said some would sense it.”
“I did sense you were different. But the smell of sagrada tends to overpower everything. My father is human, though, so I was curious to get a closer look at you.”
“Your father is human?”
“Yes. My mother is Manti. Nearly as Manti as Cleo.”
“How did—” She hesitated, knowing it was an intensely personal question. “Do you mind if I ask how that happened? I thought the humans were all in Al Campo.”
“Intermarriage is the one way they can get out. It’s part of the DAB-lab protocol for reproduction.”
When Pax had told her the genetics lab needed human DNA, she’d never guessed they’d incorporate it in such a … traditional way. “How does that work, exactly?”
“If someone wants out, they volunteer. There’s a lottery among those deemed too Manti to reproduce with other Manti. Basically it’s an arranged marriage. It avoids the more sterile approaches of using donors or tampering with DNA.”
“Do people ever run once they get out?”
“Sometimes. But if they’re caught they’re executed, so most don’t.”
Internment, forced marriage, execution—it almost made Sanctuary look utopian. “Do your parents … do they have any feeling for each other?” Or is it just another kind of prison?
“Believe it or not, yes. My father adores her. She pretends to tolerate him, but the adoration is mutual. It wasn’t always that way, though. I was conceived in a glass tube.”
“I see.”
“My five siblings were conceived the old-fashioned way.”
“Five!” Five siblings could hardly be explained away as a moment of weakness.
“We were a pack of little devils.” He laughed. “I think they bonded out of desperation.”
They could be talking about any other couple. Any human couple. This reminded her of another potentially sensitive question she wanted to ask him. “Earlier when you said you’re not like Pax, did you mean you don’t experience the same sort of … drives?”
Again he laughed. “No, I don’t mean that. I just mean it never takes me over so completely I could hurt someone.”
“You’re lucky. I think it would be pretty hard to live with.”
They stopped in front of another wall, and Micah fixed his gaze on her before opening it.
“I understand why you had to leave him, but outside of that, it sounds to me like you don’t bear him any ill will. I’m not going to ask you questions that could have answers I’d be obligated to share with others. But I want to warn you that Cleo is very dangerous when crossed.”
Asha swallowed. “I don’t doubt that.”
He passed his hand over the wall, and the tunnel opened out into a cavern filled with dark-cloaked figures. Cleo noticed their arrival and walked over to meet them.
“There are two groups behind us in the tunnels, my lady,” Micah told her. “They’re the last. You should cross in small numbers, just to be safe.”
Cleo nodded. “Your friends in Al Campo will be ready for us?”
“It’s earlier than we agreed, but they knew something like this might happen. They’ll be ready enough.”
The priestess smiled. “I don’t know how we’ll manage without you, Micah. We would never have prepared for this in time without your talents, and your devotion to our cause.”
Asha glanced at him, alarmed at what the first statement suggested. Micah bowed his head, acknowledging the praise.
“I hate running like thieves in the night,” continued Cleo. “That temple represents our greatest triumph—the funding we were able to procure, alone. The idea of Emile giving it to some wealthy patron, or turning it into a museum…” Her mouth twisted in disgust.
“There will be greater triumphs, my lady,” Micah replied in a voice soft with deference. “And we’ll run them out of it soo
n enough.”
Cleo gave him her hand. He pressed it to his lips. When he released it she moved away, and he turned to Asha.
“The others will take you the rest of the way. There’s some scrambling overground, and a few more underground passages. Take it slow and you’ll be fine. It’s dark now, and the cloaks will hide you from Scarab patrols.”
She wasn’t worried about scrambling over rocks and dirt in the dark. She’d been doing it since she was a child sneaking out to explore the desert in the moonlight. She was worried about losing her only friend among her new companions.
“Will I see you again?”
“Not for a while. I’m more useful to Cleo working for DAB-lab security than I am hiding in Al Campo. And if I went missing it would draw attention to what I’ve been doing.”
He reached out his hand, and she grasped it. He bent to kiss her cheek and said in a low voice, “Remember what I said about Cleo. Take care of yourself, Asha.”
A shiver ran through her and she nodded. “Thank you for the information you’ve shared with me. It’ll make figuring out my next steps much easier.”
He released her hand and turned to go, but stopped and turned back. “What’s your father’s name?”
She stared at him, still preoccupied with anxiety over his departure. “My father?”
“Maybe my contact inside can help you find him.”
“Oh of course, thank you. His name is Harker. Harker St. John.”
Something flashed in Micah’s eyes.
“What is it?”
“The man I’ve been working with inside…” He shook his head. “I thought it was just a hacker handle.”
Her heart jumped. “What do you mean?”
“He goes by the name ‘Hark.’”
REUNIONS
Asha and the others emerged from the cavern onto open ground—rocky, treeless, and sloped. She hit the ground hard within the first five minutes of their trek. The stars were mostly obscured by clouds and the terrain was uneven, but it had more to do with her head than either her eyes or her feet.
As much as she wanted to believe, she was driven clumsy and half mad by uncertainty. Because it was so unlike him. She adored her father to the point of worship, but part of the reason for that was that he was softer than her mother. Less driven. He’d had more time for Asha, and more of a parent’s empathy. To say that he was bright was an understatement, and he was honest and hardworking. But a hacker? One talented enough to have helped Micah defeat Al Campo’s security system? It was more like something her mother would do.
After a few kilometers of walking, they entered a tunnel that had been bored through a steep hillside. The canal that passed through it ran back toward the city.
None of the others had spoken to her, and she heard only the occasional murmur of them speaking to each other. But as she fell for the second time, one of them showed her a strip of colored dots that were reactive to the heat in the tip of her finger. She could use them to adjust the cloak so it emitted a soft green glow on the underside.
This saved her in the tunnel, which had been made wide enough for the canal to pass through and not much else. In places they were less walking than horizontally scaling the tunnel wall. The slippers she’d been given were slick on the bottom, and finally she removed them and clung to the rocky surface with bare feet.
As they neared the end of the tunnel, she scraped her injured wrist across a jagged surface, and her cast crumbled away into the canal. She muttered an oath at her carelessness, but soon discovered her wrist felt whole and healthy again.
“They come off when it’s time.” She glanced up to find the attendant who’d helped her with her bath smiling at her. Then she turned and continued after the others.
When they reached the tunnel’s end they paused for a rest, dimming their cloaks now that a crisp half-moon threw an anemic light over the ground outside. As the two disciples in the lead stepped out of the tunnel, someone heard a Scarab approaching, and they sank back into the shadows until it glided past.
Cresting the next hill, Asha could see the lights of Granada to the southwest, and a walled village that blanketed the valley to the northeast. Directly north there was a facility of some kind—a sprawling structure, the least remarkable of any she’d seen since her arrival, well-lit and surrounded by what looked like greenhouses, plantings, silos, and pens for animals. Smaller buildings dotted the grounds, connected by a road.
The village to the northeast had to be Al Campo. The construction material was odd—from where she stood it looked like rock smoothed by wind and water, reminding her of formations near her home. Along the edges of the village ran a neat row of long, inward-curving posts, like the ribs of some enormous animal.
Bone Town.
“I’ve fulfilled my part of our agreement,” Cleo said, startling her. Asha hadn’t noticed her moving close. The Manti woman’s antennae protruded under the hood of her cloak, giving her an even more threatening appearance.
“We’re not inside yet,” Asha replied coolly.
“We will be within the hour.”
Still she had time. Pax would first have to unravel the mystery of their disappearance. And it was possible he wouldn’t. Cleo couldn’t justly hold her to their bargain in that case. Though Asha had a feeling that wouldn’t stop her.
Eventually she would have to face this. If her father was behind this alliance, she couldn’t cope with her uncertainty by running again. He was the whole reason she’d come.
She groaned inwardly. Nothing made sense anymore. She felt fractured, like her personality had broken in two, each pulling the opposite direction. She could only hope that seeing her father would help to reground her.
* * *
Inside the tunnels it was easy enough to follow Asha’s trail, but the dead man slowed them down considerably. There’d been no quick means of separating the disciple from his arm, and even if there had been, Pax wasn’t sure he’d have the stomach for it. Those dark years before Granada had seen such horrors and far worse, but Pax had grown up in palaces, and the war was over by the time he was four. He hadn’t clawed to the top of a pile of dead enemies to survive, like the former generation. He’d fought for his life a couple times, but killing a man in a berserker rage because he’d tried to kill you was a far cry from coolly sawing off a limb.
The ingenuity of Rebelión Sagrada in preparing for the amir’s eventual invasion of the temple was staggering. Cleo was clever, but this? This had required a level of technical expertise he would not have thought available to them. But then he’d been staggered by the temple as well. Everyone had been. It was time to stop underestimating these people.
He had never felt comfortable thinking of the group as his enemy. It was his father’s view, and his sister’s. And he doubted he could ever forgive Cleo for what she’d tried to do to his family. To him personally. But though he’d never understood their worship of the maniacal (and egomaniacal) genius who’d created them all, he felt some empathy with their views on DAB-lab’s manipulation of Manti genetics. So why these sudden feelings of enmity?
It was more than the attack in the alley, he knew. It was because they’d spirited away Asha, forcing him to undertake a recovery mission his father would never approve of. Risking his ability to protect her. Making him ask himself hard questions in the process.
“Bloody hell!” Pax exclaimed as he lost his grip on the body and it slumped to the ground.
Carrick groaned, and he could only imagine what the priest must be going through, forced to help carry the corpse of the man he’d killed so they could use the mark on his wrist.
“Come on,” urged Pax. “It can’t be far now.”
But he had no way of knowing whether this was true or not. He’d been aware there were tunnels under the city—they’d been used centuries ago for secret worship and even hiding and fleeing by the Muslims and Jews living under Catholic rule. But his father had declared them off-limits for safety reasons, and he’d had no
idea they were so intact, or where they might lead.
Carrick bent and lifted the dead man’s feet. “You’re sure we’re not walking into some kind of trap?”
Pax gripped under the man’s arms, hoisting him again. “No, I’m not.”
* * *
Asha brought up the rear as they scrambled down a loose hillside and then traversed along the base of the slope toward Bone Town. Cleo hadn’t instructed anyone to keep an eye on her, probably feeling secure in the fact they were so close to her object she wasn’t likely to slip away.
When they reached the farther end of the village, they cut across the valley to the hill at its back. As they approached, she saw that while less ornate than the structures within the city, Al Campo had a similar, organic feel. No hard lines or corners. The buildings seemed to flow together like water or sand. She also noticed small towers and lines of columns made of the same blanched material as the fence, their shapes also resembling bones or tusks. And as they drew closer still, the light washing over the structure revealed small, brightly colored spheres, seemingly placed at random atop posts or towers, or set in the middle of walls or sloping roofs. It was like the architect had been unable to completely restrain whimsical impulses.
They crouched beside the fence where it joined with the base of the steep hillside, and one of the party used a navigator to locate a section that had been replaced with the smart resin.
As the others dropped down and crawled through the opening, Asha studied the fence. The ribs were easily three meters tall, but at about two meters they narrowed, creating openings.
“This is all that keeps them in?” she asked.
The disciple with the navigator glanced at her. “There’s an electrical field. But Micah has access to that in security. This section is collapsed.”
As she ducked into the opening Asha wondered if the humans inside knew this—that all that stood between them and freedom was a three-meter fence.
Adjusting their cloaks so they could see, they regrouped in the narrow alley formed by the hillside and the back row of buildings. The disciple she’d spoken with reminded them to stay close together.
The Ophelia Prophecy Page 17
