Merrin gasped.
“It can’t be,” murmured the man looming above Jenna. “There hasn’t been a Speaker since Father Konrad died.”
Father Konrad? Did he mean Konrad Roran? Jenna’s throat constricted. They couldn’t think Kendra was like Roran. He had caused death and mayhem and rebellion. Then she remembered. Hadn’t he convinced his followers by doing some remarkable stuff? Like attacking their enemies with windstorms and fallen trees?
Suddenly, Jenna felt a little sick.
“That is ridiculous,” Merrin said at last, her voice hard. “There are no Speakers now, and certainly if another Speaker were to arise, it would be from our own people.”
“You can’t make that judgment,” Lenata argued. “Take us to the Council and let them judge. They will see that I am right.”
Merrin frowned, her knife still pressed against Kip’s neck. Jenna needed to shift herself, her back was crying out for relief, but she still had the spear pointed directly at her chest. Then suddenly, it moved aside.
“Let them up, Merrin. We do need to take them before the Council. If there’s even a chance that girl is a Speaker, we have to know. It could save us,” the man declared.
“Evan Blaze, do not give me orders. You are not in command here,” Merrin replied icily. Jenna waited anxiously while both the Rorans stared coldly at each other. Finally, Merrin shrugged. “Fine. The Council can decide what to do with them. But mark my words, we’ll regret it.”
The man called Evan didn’t speak again. Instead, he tapped Jenna’s arm with his spear, and Jenna shot upward, staggering to her feet. She moved to the trunk, where she helped Lenata climb clumsily back down and then held her arms out to her daughter. When Kendra made it back down to the platform, she held her daughter tightly for an extra moment. Ten minutes ago she had thought she would never see her daughter again. They would make it through this too. They had to.
●●●
Once all six of them had made their way down the ladder on the far end of the platform, Merrin ordered them to walk in single file. She was disgusted to find out that Lenata couldn’t see well enough to walk on her own, and she gave Kip the responsibility of making sure that Lenata didn’t trip or go the wrong direction. Then she strode off into the trees, finding a gap in the undergrowth that was barely visible. Kip led Lenata after her, and Jenna sent Kendra next, with Evan silently gliding through the jungle at the end. After ten or fifteen minutes of silently making their way over logs and around tree trunks, Jenna finally spoke to Kip. “What did you mean when you said that Kendra and I have the same energy signature that all Rorans do?”
Kip was silent for a moment. Just when Jenna thought he was going to ignore her question altogether, he spoke. “Years ago as a student researcher, I accompanied a scientist who had been studying the insect life in the equatorial jungles of Zoria. We came as part of a fairly large scientific convoy that planned to do research for about half a year. By chance, during one of our scouting expeditions, I discovered a roach that no one had ever seen before.”
“Water roaches,” Kendra piped up.
Kip chuckled. “Close. Wattenwil roaches. I did my advanced research project on them. Discovered the toxins.”
Jenna shuddered again, remembering the swarming insects and how they had crunched under her boots.
“Anyway, I ended up a little . . . obsessed with the wattenwils, I guess. I came back on my own and hired a Roran Raviner to help me find more of them.”
Evan spoke up from the back of the line. “There are no Roran Raviners,” he contradicted. “We don’t even trade with the Raviners.”
Kip only snorted. Jenna remembered that Kip had mentioned that the river bridge had been made out of rope that he had traded to the Rorans. Perhaps Evan was not aware of what went on in his own village.
“Edy was a Roran who had run away from the village to the Ravine and worked as a guide for those who wanted to get around the jungle,” Kip explained.
Merrin sniffed. “He was no longer a Roran. Those who leave the village are not one of us anymore.”
“Perhaps,” conceded Kip. “But be that as it may, Edy had a talent for finding the wattenwils. If there were any of them anywhere in the area, they would head straight toward him. It made researching them easier and more difficult. They were much easier to find, but at the same time, I couldn’t study their natural behavior that way.” He shook his head. “I finally turned to studying Edy to find out what it was about him that attracted the wattenwils.”
“You used him as a test subject?” Evan was horrified.
“He volunteered,” Kip defended irritably. “I paid him pretty well. In the end we learned that for some reason, he had a residual qualian energy signature.”
“I don’t know what qualian energy is,” Jenna admitted.
Merrin sighed heavily. “Nothing useful, I’m sure. Nor is it anything that we need to know about.”
“Well, I feel you are wrong on both counts, Merrin,” said Kip, “since you radiate qualian energy yourself.”
Merrin ignored him completely, not even bothering to turn around. But when Jenna darted a glance behind her, she could see that Evan wasn’t bothering to hide his interest. He was focused intently on Kip.
“To make a long story short,” Kip continued, “after a few more years, I’d compiled a list of strange things about my roaches. One, wattenwil roaches only live—as far as I’ve been able to confirm—in a relatively small area of this jungle. At the center of the range is the Rorans’ hidden village. Which, not coincidentally, has the highest concentration of qualian energy I’ve ever registered.”
“You still haven’t explained what qualian energy is,” Jenna reminded, pushing a large frond away from her face.
“Have you heard of quintessence?” asked Kip.
“Sure. It’s a form of expanding energy only found in space.”
“Well, probes focused on some of the more distant parts of the universe have found compacted quintessence, which they’ve named qualian energy. Technically, still no one knows much about it or what it could be. I’m no physicist, so I barely understand it myself. But a friend of mine had gotten the crazy idea that qualian energy might be found on planets, not just in space. He built a scanner for it and asked me to try one of his prototypes here in Zoria. He had a hunch”—here Kip cleared his throat and turned back toward her, giving her a pointed look—“that I might find something in this area that would explain some . . . unusual . . . phenomena he’s been studying.”
Unusual phenomena? That Kip couldn’t discuss in front of their Roran captors?
Jenna sucked in a breath. Someone else knew about the strange disasters that had befallen people around Konrad Roran. The power to affect the elements. The power to make things behave completely contrary to normal physics. And Kip’s friend thought that qualian energy was connected to it. She glanced down at her daughter again. Did this connect to Kendra? How?
“I was curious about a possible connection with the Rorans, so I built my lab within walking distance of their village. Then I started trading with them. They brought me insects and the plants and food that I needed, and I gave them information and special goods they wanted from the outside. And every time a Roran came with a delivery, I scanned them.”
Evan sucked in a breath. “You’ve been experimenting on us?” He was affronted. “Merrin, did you know about this?”
Merrin didn’t respond, and Lenata hadn’t reacted at all. Clearly the scanning was either not a surprise or a not big deal to them.
“It didn’t hurt you, did it?” Kip scoffed. “Quit being such a baby. Anyway, you have only the barest hint of a signature, Evan. The qualian energy doesn’t like you much.”
“He has no isithunzi,” confirmed Lenata. Merrin froze and whirled around.
“How dare you!” exclaimed Merrin. “That is a sacred term, not mea
nt to be bandied about with Outsiders, nor should one such as you mock Evan.”
Lenata shrugged. “I’ve already spoken with Kip about it. That’s how I knew about Mrs. Forrest here. But he knew all about isithunzi before I ever met him.”
“Edy was a fount of information,” agreed Kip cheerfully.
“What do you mean?” Jenna asked warily. “What did you know about me?”
“Well, your qualian energy signature was too high for casual contact with a Roran. Your signature is about the same as Lenata’s. As if you’d once been a Roran and then left the village,” Kip said.
“That makes no sense.” Jenna rubbed at an eye.
“Not just any Roran,” continued Lenata. “Rorans without an isithunzi, like Evan, barely register for Kip. Rorans who once had an isithunzi—a shadow of the planet’s life force herself dwelling with them—and then lose it have a signature like you and me.”
Jenna was turning this over in her mind. It still made no sense.
“Now, Kendra, on the other hand—she clearly still has an isithunzi,” Lenata continued casually.
Jenna stopped short, and Evan walked straight into her.
“What?” they both exclaimed, almost in unison.
“Well, her readings do match Merrin’s,” Kip explained, his tone slightly apologetic.
Merrin whirled around. “That is enough,” she hissed. “I will not listen to any more of this heresy. You will follow me in silence, or I will silence you myself.”
The trek proceeded silently after that. No one dared test whether Merrin meant her threat.
Jenna’s thoughts were furiously traveling in circles. Kip had said back on the tree platform that Jenna had this qualian energy signature. Now he was saying Kendra had it too? Only it was even stronger than on Jenna? Had they been marked by something?
Or someone?
Jenna started to shake. All of Kendra’s words about her imaginary friend Dina, her report that someone had attacked Lenata in the bug room, the suggestion that this was something different about the Rorans, and Konrad Roran had been a Speaker, and so was Kendra, according to Lenata . . . everything crystallized into one razor-sharp, unwelcome realization.
Jenna’s stomach lurched, and she stopped, steadying herself against one of the giant tree trunks. Bile rose in her throat. Qualian energy wasn’t a force. It was a being of some kind. Or worse, they were beings of some kind. Beings that had some kind of supernatural powers, and one of them was with her daughter all the time.
34. Jimmy Returns to the Red Zone
The chartered ship touched down on the landing pad a couple hours before sunrise in Omphalos. As soon as the bracing gear locked into place, Jimmy was out of his seat and heading for the loading door. The crewman met him at the door.
“We’ve made good time,” he said cheerfully.
“Thank you,” Jimmy replied simply. He knew that waiting for the next shuttle would have taken much longer, but the trip had seemed interminably long. It had been a long time since he’d traveled by ship, and this was his first time ever in a cargo hold. It hadn’t been nearly as uncomfortable as he’d feared it would be. He’d had a reasonably padded seat to strap into, and the hold was climate controlled. Still, as the copilot unhooked the travel cases from the cargo sling, Jimmy rolled his neck, trying to work out the stiffness. It had been a rough flight at times.
The outer door depressurized with a hiss, and then the cargo door clanked open noisily while the ramp slowly lowered to the deck. Jimmy’s foot tapped restlessly. Part of him wanted to dash down the ramp—maybe the children were waiting for him already—but part of him was afraid to confront what might face him when he left the ship.
What if the Quintans had betrayed him again?
What if the ransom delivery had gone wrong?
Worst of all, what if something had happened to the kids?
He wondered briefly who would be waiting to meet him. Surely not his father. The ship had landed at the Xanadu Hotel complex, which was a block away from the QE. It was connected to the QE by tube, but he couldn’t see his father strapping in and going for a bounce across just to watch Jimmy get off the ship in the middle of the night. Especially not when his father had looked so unwell in the comm.
What was wrong with his father?
When the ramp finally locked into place, Jimmy started forward, the crewman following behind him with his travel case. A solitary man waited at the bottom, staring grimly up at Jimmy.
Grier.
Jimmy actually managed a real smile for the first time in days.
“I thought you were retired,” he said lightly to the bodyguard when he reached the deck.
Grier snorted. “So did I. But this annoyingly persistent young berk I used to know convinced me to do him a favor, and now the Quintans have roped me back into the job again. Temporarily!” he added stiffly.
“Right,” Jimmy said knowingly. “Because you’re just too old for this stuff.”
“It’s a good thing I don’t work for you anymore. I can punch you if I feel like it,” Grier said, his tone only half-joking.
“At least I know how you really feel about me. You’re one of only two people in the whole city of Omphalos I trust.”
The twinkle in Grier’s eyes vanished and his shoulders slumped, just slightly.
“What?” Jimmy asked, alarmed.
“I have some bad news,” Grier stated, his tone neutral.
Jimmy closed his eyes briefly, drawing in a shallow breath. Please, not the kids. Anything but that.
“Let’s get you down to the tube and over to the QE. I’ll tell you what I know on the way.”
As soon as they reached the basement tube station of the Xanadu, Jimmy turned to Grier.
“So?” he demanded anxiously.
“As your father probably told you, Mr. Zane and Ms. Armenta met the kidnappers to pay the ransom several hours ago.”
“What?” Jimmy interrupted, aghast. “They sent Zane?”
Grier let a tiny sigh escape. “The kidnappers made it a condition of the exchange. Ms. Armenta went with him because they hoped she would recognize if they were not in fact your children.”
“You’re not even sure they actually had Erik and Berry?” He couldn’t believe that Lev Quintan hadn’t demanded proof of that before agreeing to pay any kind of ransom, or even having a meeting.
“Well, there was little time to act, and no way to get hold of you in time. Your father and Lilah both felt that the girl in the vid they sent was indeed Miss Beryl.” Grier’s tone was matter-of-fact. He always managed to keep his own opinions on the Quintans’ actions completely hidden. Jimmy wondered what Grier thought of all this. Would he have handled it differently? Obviously things had not gone well, or Grier wouldn’t be dragging this out.
“What happened, Grier?” he asked quietly.
“As best we can tell, the exchange started off fine. The kidnappers agreed to hand over Mr. Erik first and brought him off their ship. Ms. Armenta confirmed that it was your son. But then their transport exploded. Looking at some of the vid feed from the Quintan Security officers deployed around the perimeter, some other faction arrived and must have fired some kind of rocket at the transport.” Grier’s explanation was precise and direct, his tone flat, as if he were recounting the details of a meaningless training exercise.
“And?” Jimmy spit the single word out past his frozen lips. He couldn’t form the questions that filled his mind. What about Erik? Was he safe? Where was Berry? Was Lilah in the transport?
“And everyone disappeared in the commotion that followed. The kidnappers’ ship took off again before any of the Quintan Security officers made it down to them. We could track Zane’s jewel implant for a short while—apparently he went on the kidnappers’ ship—but then it went offline. The Quintan Security found no trace of Lilah or Erik in the square
. We don’t know if they ended up on the ship also.”
A vise grip tightened around Jimmy’s chest, and for a moment he thought he was having a heart attack.
Grier put a hand on his arm. “Mr. James?” he asked, worried.
The band of pain loosened, and Jimmy gasped. “I’m all right,” he managed breathlessly. Before Grier could ask him what was wrong, their tube was ready and Jimmy waved him forward. The quicker they got to the QE, the better. They quickly strapped into the capsule, and he didn’t have a chance to ask Grier any more questions. But he thought through what he had learned at a furious pace. Erik had been alive just a few hours ago. There had been no sign of Berry, but Lilah had believed the kidnappers really did have her. If the explosion had killed Lilah or Erik, Quintan Security would have found their bodies. So they had gotten away. But if they had escaped the explosion, wouldn’t they have just run straight for the security officers that were heading their way? That left the possibility of both of them being on the kidnappers’ ship. Like Zane. That would mean the kidnappers now had four hostages instead of two, plus the ransom.
What if it had been planned that way?
What if Zane had planned it that way?
The queasy feeling that roiled in the pit of his stomach had nothing to do with the tube bounce.
35. Basement Sanctuary
Lilah eyed the boarded-up basement window critically and then drew a deep breath, lashing out with her foot and kicking in the blackened wood. A cloud of soot dusted her boots, and Erik coughed weakly at her side, his sweaty hand clinging to her fingers. She nervously glanced around the empty alley and then aimed her gun at the window. No one appeared. This was risky; just the fact that the window was boarded up told her that someone probably called this ramshackle building home. But the top two floors were gutted and black, clearly victims of a fire, probably one within the last few months. It was possible that the boarded basement was a relic from before the fire and no one lived in the building anymore. Either way, they were out of time. It might be dangerous inside the crumbling building, but it was definitely dangerous in the street, and they needed to get out of sight as soon as possible.
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