Hearts & Minds: Book Six in the Crown of Blood series

by White, Gwynn

  Ivarr and his programs huddled together. They spoke quickly in Trevenese. Ivarr turned back to Shale. “That’s better than nothing. Can you do that now?”

  Kai Lin and Shale exchanged worried looks. She was fiddling with her lip again. “If we do that, then Lukan will know. He will probably try to attack the Hive again. Electronically.”

  “It’s a risk we are prepared to take,” Ivarr said. “Turn it off.”

  Shale shot Kai Lin another look, this time questioning.

  Meka braced himself for an argument. It was one thing to worry about Lukan listening in, it was altogether another to let paranoia cripple them.

  Kai Lin nodded slowly.

  He settled back down to listen and watch. From where he sat, Ivarr blocked the view of Nicholas.

  Shale fiddled with his lines of coding. He bit his lip. “It’s done.”

  Ivarr shifted just as the image of Nicholas lying with Farith’s on her mattress in Farith’s little reading room flickered and died.

  Meka’s guts sagged. It felt like they wanted to fall right out him. “Gutted,” he muttered. It described the feeling exactly. Farith was even lovelier than he remembered. They had been in that little cave when Farith had asked him to make love to her. He’d said no. And now she was so far, far away. So much could still go wrong to stop them from being reunited. Part of him cursed for being an idiot to turn her down. Another, more hopeful, side knew he’d made the right decision.

  Father’s hand dropped onto his shoulder. “You look exhausted. Why don’t you leave everything to me? Things will look a whole lot better after some sleep.”

  He shook his head. “Not while Shale and Kai Lin are working.” He glanced at Dip. “He needs watching, too.”

  Dip stuck his tongue out at him.

  Meka suppressed a smile. “Cheeky bugger.”

  Father’s hand squeezed his shoulder. “We have six alliance soldiers cluttering up the place. They can watch the boys. And as for Kai Lin and Shale…They’re falling asleep on their feet, too. Sleep is essential if the three of you want to be of use.”

  Meka yawned before he could stop it. “All this talk about sleep,” he groused. But even he had to admit that sleep would be bliss. He called over to Shale and Kai Lin, “Any chance of us going and catching some shut-eye while we leave the fresh meat to watch over everything?”

  Kai Lin spread her arms wide. “As long as they don’t tamper with any of our systems.”

  “No, ma’am,” Ivarr said. “We’ll do nothing without your permission. We have plenty of time before the warlord gets to Cian to familiarize ourselves with your systems.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Meka said around another yawn.

  Shale stood up and stretched. “I could sleep.”

  Kai Lin hesitated. “You two go. I’ll join you later.”

  “No,” Meka said. “It’s all or no one.”

  Kai Lin worried her lip with her fingers. She nodded to Ivarr. “Wake us at dawn.” Exhaustion must have won over her concerns.

  Meka stumbled out of the room and made his way to the sickbay. He wanted to be there when Grigor woke. He flopped down onto the cot next to his brother. Moments before drifting off to sleep, he recalled that they hadn’t contacted Axel to tell him about Nicholas’s ice crystal.

  Try as he might, he didn’t have the energy to get up. Sleep claimed him, and he remembered nothing more.

  Twenty-Six

  Bright As The Sun

  Axel slouched on the table with his head resting on his hand, listening to Clay read from Dmitri’s book.

  “The Full History of The Dmitri Curse. Published in the year 20 Post Burning,” Clay read.

  Axel’s eyebrows twitched. The book was close to four hundred years old. He really wanted to believe that Dmitri had finally given them something of value, but he couldn’t get his cynical side to shut up for long enough to have the faith Dmitri had asked for. He sighed and closed his eyes to listen.

  “Lust and greed prompted Thurban to invade Norin,” Clay read. “From that day forward, beautiful Norin princesses would be sent to Chenaya as temptresses to see if Thurban’s posterity, the crown princes, could curb their lust. Not even the threat of a son powerful enough to destroy them will stay their hands.” Clay paused.

  Axel opened his eyes. “Don’t tell me that’s it. Although that said, it wouldn’t really surprise me.”

  Lynx kicked him under the table.

  “Just taking a breath,” Clay said.

  Axel smiled at him. “Well, don’t. It gets me into trouble with Lynx.”

  Clay laughed. “I think you manage that very well all on your own.”

  Axel shrugged; he wasn’t going to argue with that truth. He waved at the book. “Get on with it.”

  Clay continued. “Hark well, oh dragon of Chenaya. Observe the diamond in thy eye. It fires with lust and craving. A lust to herald thy demise. Touch not the mother or her son. Lest thy skin fall foul of her protector. For thus shall Axel Lukan flay, if harm befalls his Lynx.”

  Axel snorted. “Dmitri got that bit right.”

  Lynx smiled at him. “Lukan’s terror was the only thing that kept us alive.”

  “Not for much longer.” He nudged Clay. “Keep going.”

  “Unfurl the map. Lay out all the pieces. The fiery diamond, a ruby red, a sapphire’s azure hue lays waste to emerald green. But what is this? A twist. A turn. A game of chance. A game of wit. Roll the dice, and let the battle ring. The tiles will fall and shift until the victor claims the throne of sleep and waking.”

  Axel snorted as derisively as possible. “I always said Dmitri was jerking us around. This proves it.”

  Lynx kicked him under the table again and shot him a warning look.

  Across from him, Thorn smiled. His father-in-law and dear friend knew him well. Many, many years before, Thorn had offered him the Winds as a god. Then, as now, Axel had no faith in gods. Winds, Constellations, and Spirits, whoever else was in the pantheon… none of them would step in to do what the living required. They never had. They probably never would. Jerawin and Chad had learned long ago not to enter this debate with him and now said nothing.

  Lynx nudged Clay, “Carry on, let’s hear what he has to say.”

  Clay frowned at the page. “I forgot to show you the illustration.” He turned the book around. On the facing page was a typical game of Chenayan strategy. The map unfurled, the tiles representing the Emperor, the Crown Prince, the Lord of the Household, the Lord of the Conquest, the high-born with their sapphires and their emeralds, the jaspers, even the moonstones for the priestesses. A typical Chenayan game of strategy.

  “Keep moving,” Axel said sharply.

  Clay started reading again. “Oh, mournful day. Traitor’s day. What was, is now no more. In the north, wings of obsidian black and eyes of ruby red sweep the beacon from the sky. Dark is the night and long is the day in which the dragon roars.

  “To wit, what is this I here perceive? A banner. A torch. A light to divide asunder. Well, may the dragon eye the nursling. For up he rises, that banner, that beacon, that torch.

  “Neither steel, nor stone, nor fire of any hue can the dragon now defend. The father shall die at the hand of the sun.”

  “That seems clear enough,” Chad said, fiddling with the ice crystal bead in his long ponytail. “Nicholas will kill Lukan.”

  “I agree,” Jerawin said.

  Lynx and Thorn nodded.

  This was exactly in line with what Axel had been told virtually since birth. No weapon made of steel, ice crystal, or fire could defend Lukan. Which was just as well, because he planned on arming his true defenders with shotguns and incendiary balls. He sighed. Shotguns and incendiary balls Nicholas had forbidden them from using. If Dmitri really wanted to be helpful, his books would say something about that.

  “Move on,” Axel said to Clay.

  Clay smiled at him, a cryptic smile.

  Axel sat up straight. “What?”

  “It’s the sp
elling. Have a look at this.” Clay turned the book and pointed at the word sun.

  Axel leaned forward for a better look. He frowned, and then looked at Lynx.

  “That’s spelled S, U, N,” she said.

  “I see that.” He glanced at Jerawin and Chad. They sat mute, staring at the book, as if not quite comprehending.

  “A spelling mistake?” Axel asked.

  Lynx and Thorn both glared at him. “I hardly think that Dmitri the Seer would have spelling mistakes in his book,” Lynx said.

  She was right. But then what did it mean? He had built an alliance on the fact that Lukan’s eldest son would kill his father. This suddenly made no sense. “Let’s see the image,” Axel demanded.

  Clay obliged. Illuminated in gold, a brilliant sun beamed back at Axel. Below it, a severed head lay separated from its body. Even with the blood and gore—the picture was extremely graphic—it wasn’t hard to see that it was Lukan.

  “Well, that’s no help,” King Thorn said.

  “My thoughts exactly. Do you want me to continue?” Clay asked.

  A defiant part of Axel wanted to toss the book out. The more logical side of him that valued any intelligence, no matter its source, kept him glued to the book. Only once he had heard the whole thing would he be able to determine whether it had value or not.

  Lynx held up her hand. “Should we not call on Dmitri and ask him for an explanation?”

  Typical of Lynx. As much as he loved his raider, she was determined to support Dmitri in everything the dead decided to inflict upon them. Still, he nodded, “If it helps, why not.”

  She closed her eyes. He wondered what she was saying to Dmitri.

  A few moments later, she shrugged and opened her eyes. “If he’s here, he’s not answering.” She twirled her feathers and braids. “Axel, I know the problems with Nicholas’s ice crystal, but maybe he should be here. Dmitri would talk with him.”

  Axel ran a hand across his face, wishing the answers were simple. Wishing that Dmitri wasn’t such a trickster who always spoke in riddles. Wishing that Lukan didn’t have access to Nicholas’s ice crystal. “Lynxie, you know the challenge as well as I do.”

  “I do. But I can’t shift the feeling that Cricket involved me in the book because she wanted me to make sure Nicholas was here when we read it.”

  “All right. I don’t normally run a democracy, but we’re all leaders of the Pathfinder Alliance. What does everybody say?” He looked first at Thorn, Nicholas’s grandfather. Since the alliance’s inception, Thorn had supported them in the background without Lukan ever discovering it. “What do you think?”

  Thorn rubbed his chin with a scarred finger. “Let the others speak first.”

  “Okay.” Axel looked at Jerawin. “What are the stars telling you?”

  Jerawin looked up at the stone roof as if he could see the constellations right through it. A measured man, at the same time, he had a heart as bold as a lion. When the chips were down and you needed a friend at your side, Jerawin was the man. He stood up and paced. Backwards and forwards. Backwards and forwards.

  Axel wanted to hurry him up, but he knew better than that. Jerawin would take his time, he always did. Finally, the old man turned to face him. He, too, shook his head. “How can we risk it? We have all lost so much. To let Lukan know what this book contains… It’s not a risk we can take.”

  Axel held up a finger. “One vote for no. What about you, Chad?”

  “Never. Not on my watch. We’re going to go into Cian with so much against us. The Light-Bearer has already asked us for the impossible. We cannot let him expose this to Lukan. So, my vote is no.”

  “Two out of six.” His eyes shifted to Clay. “Yes? No?”

  Everyone looked at Clay. After all, he had read that frustrating book of verse. He knew better than anyone if Nicholas should be called.

  “I know what you want,” Clay said to Lynx. “You want to protect your son. But at the same time, you want to destroy the empire. They’re mutually exclusive.”

  Lynx looked down, breaking eye contact.

  Clay turned to him, “I vote no.”

  He also voted no. That meant the majority carried the day. But not to ask Lynx and Thorn would be dishonorable in the nth degree. He smiled at Lynx. “My Lynxie?”

  It took a moment for her to look up, but when she did, her icy blue eyes were like flints. “I say that we bring him in. Let him help us.”

  “How can you risk it?” Chad demanded.

  “How can we not risk it?” Lynx shot back. “If Cricket had wanted one of us to have that book, she’d have given it to that person. But she didn’t. She gave it to Nicholas. If necessary, we can delay any further reading until our people arrive in Cian. They could still defuse his ice crystal.”

  “What did Cricket say to you?” Thorn asked.

  Lynx twirled her feathers and braids. “The conversation was convoluted. I was stressing about Nicholas. I want a future for him beyond being a Light-Bearer. She came and said that it was a pity he couldn’t read, but there are other influences in Nicholas’s life now. I think she referred to Anna and Farith. Then she said that he needed to be given this book. She asked where to leave it so he’d find it. I suggested Farith’s nook.”

  Her words fell into a pool of silence. Axel looked down at the table, not seeing the wood, pondering how best to handle this conundrum. Dmitri, he called silently. Some help would be good. There was nothing. There never was.

  Not entirely true. He didn’t believe in lying to himself. Dmitri had helped in the past.

  He turned to Thorn. “Are you ready to speak?”

  “We haven’t heard from you yet.”

  Trust Thorn to notice that. The question was simple. Did he override the advice of his two key allies, Chad and Jerawin? Not to forget his brother Clay’s opinion. He trusted them all implicitly.

  But when had Lynx ever failed him?

  Axel stood and stretched, then walked across the cave to a chalkboard mounted on one wall. He’d use it in his briefing to his flight commanders before they boarded the airships for Cian. Now he rested his forehead on the cool board.

  Nicholas was his son. Lynx, his wife. More than anything, he wanted to survive this war with them by his side. Would bringing Nicholas into this meeting compromise that? Would it stop him from one day raiding an egg to give to Lynx?

  He didn’t know, and Axel hated not knowing.

  He’d built a life on having the answers. If he couldn’t find a solution, he’d beat it out until it appeared to him. He didn’t have time now. Every day they lingered in Treven, more guardsmen arrived at the palace. Without access to a vast army, he had to get to Cian as quickly as possible. That meant leaving for Cian as soon as he’d heard news from his programmers in the Hive.

  He sighed, and said to Lynx, “I can’t risk it. I’m sorry. I just don’t have the faith that you have in Dmitri. I have to follow my gut, and my gut is saying exactly what our friends and allies are saying. I cannot in good conscience go against them. The best I can offer is to hold back on the reading until we hear from Ivarr.”

  The look of betrayal that Lynx shot him cut him to the marrow.

  Never in all the time they’d been together, both apart, and in the mines, had he gone against her publicly. In every other instance, they had taken their differences to a private cavern and thrashed them out until they reached consensus. He looked at her, pleading for understanding.

  She nodded curtly. “It seems that the majority wins.” But she sat stiffly on her stool.

  He longed to take her in his arms, to drag her out of here so he could talk with her to put it right, but he couldn’t. Too much was riding on keeping Lukan clueless. He sat back down heavily. “Clay, carry on.”

  Clay shifted in his seat. He would have been an idiot not to sense the change in the mood between him and Lynx.

  Clay cleared his throat. But before he started reading, Thorn tapped the table with his fingernails. “You have not sought my opin
ion.”

  Axel grimaced. “Sorry! Just too much—”

  “You don’t need to explain.” Thorn stood and walked to the door into the hangar. “I’m not entirely sure that I’ve picked the right craft to take me to Cian.” He smiled at Axel. “Those rivets looked mighty shoddy to me. I think I’d like an hour or so alone with these fine ships to make my choice. Perhaps you will all humor me by leaving?”

  Axel’s jaw gaped. He snapped it closed. “Any other weird requests?” Not that he needed to ask. It was very clear where Thorn was going with this.

  Lynx’s tight smile confirmed his suspicions.

  “Just one,” Thorn said. “On the way to wherever you are going, pick up my grandson.” Sharp eyes bored into Axel and then shifted to Chad and Jerawin. “When our goodness, integrity, and bravery shines as bright as the sun, then we can exclude the Light-Bearer from this book reading. Until then I suggest that we all remember that Nicholas is the light that illuminates everything. We’d be fools to ignore that.” Thorn walked out into the hangar, then stopped. Without turning around, he added, “And if that mutt Lukan understands a word of this book, I’ll eat my braids and feathers.” He vanished amongst the airships.

  Axel coughed. “Um… Anyone want to argue with the Norin king?”

  Chad shook his head but didn’t make eye contact.

  Jerawin steepled his fingers but added no objection.

  Clay slipped the book into his pocket.

  Lynx smiled smugly. “A spelling mistake?” she crowed at Axel. “Hah! Almost four hundred years ago, the seer knew that we’d have this discussion. He knew that Nicholas would have an ice crystal. He knew that my father would pin you with his fabulous Norin eyes.” She smacked the table with both hands. “And that’s why Dmitri emphasized the word sun. To divide the believers from the—”

  Axel held up his hand. “We get it. We’re a bunch of heathen disbelievers.”

  Swaying her hips, Lynx stood. “Oh, I think we can exempt Clay, Chad, and Jerawin from that. They’re merely misguided. You’re the heathen.” She held out her hand to him.