Two sharp knocks interrupted. He hurried to the door and pulled it open. Perhaps it’d be good news for once. Lungvist might’ve managed to free Treysh or Seraphin could’ve pulled off an epic, newsworthy scheme. But only President Kurtmann stood at the door, his shoulders hunched and his lips sealed in a grim line. He held a clean beige uniform and offered it to Henry.
“Put these on.”
Henry’s anger flared back to life. He was no dog you ordered about, and he refused to follow around blindly. He’d done enough of that for a lifetime.
“What’s going on?”
His harsh tone caught the president by surprise. His eyes widened and he took a moment to compose himself. “There’s a place I would like to show you,” he said, “and I thought you’d appreciate the fresh air.”
The mention of an excursion outside went a long way in convincing Henry to obey. The Great Whale reminded him of his time under Mount Kairn and being trapped inside was wearing down his nerves. He snapped the uniform down and imagined himself in it. What an awkward sight he would make. Nothing like the confident strength the same clothes had granted Vermen—although the door-kicking might’ve helped in making such a strong impression on him.
“Very well,” he said. “Wait outside.”
Henry changed quickly after the president left and joined him in the corridor. They walked in an awkward silence he had no intention of breaking. Let Kurtmann stew in his unease. It seemed a small irritant compared to those he and others had endured.
As they progressed the rumbling of engines diminished and they sometimes encountered other soldiers. Kurtmann nodded at them and Henry did his best to straighten his back and look like he belonged. He tried not to pull on the too-long sleeves or blush when someone’s gaze lingered on him, but every little fault in his dress-up seemed a glaring mistake to him. No one questioned them, however, and fifteen minutes later they reached a small wooden door. The president pulled it open.
A strong gust blasted in, slamming into Henry, pushing him two steps back and stealing his soldier’s beret. His heart soared and he hurried outside to receive the gale’s full force. Dark clouds hung in the sky, heralding a storm, but no rain fell yet. Only the wind ruled the landscape below.
A familiar landscape, Henry realized as his gaze scanned the ground below. His heart sunk and he gripped their small platform’s railing tight.
Mount Kairn lay at his feet, broken. The bombs had reduced the proud mountain to a hill half its original size and an entire section of its slope had been wrecked by the bombs. Enormous rocks had crashed into the forest below and toppled centuries-old trees. The ridge from which the waterfall jumped was no more and the water ran down the mountainside in three smaller rivers that disappeared among the trees without pooling together. The deep lake into which Andeal and Maniel had dived no longer existed, but an ugly hole remained behind.
Henry shivered and tore his gaze away. On a brighter day he could’ve seen Ferrea, behind Mount Kairn. He’d lived in this area his entire life, the mountain always towering over them, providing their livelihood. Not anymore. The Races’ trail would be destroyed by rockslides, unusable. How could the event ever return now? Ferrea’s last hope lay buried under the boulders.
Unless he traced a new path and cleared it. If he wanted a home to return to, Henry would have to rebuild it piece by piece. No more waiting for official communication from the government. Not anymore. He could do it himself and this time, they would be hearing from him.
Provided he survived to come back, of course.
The president waited by his side, studying the desolation below with evident sorrow. Henry wondered how much Mount Kairn meant to him. Jacob Kurtmann had won the Races three times in his youth. Nostalgia hunched his shoulders but the president stared at the demolished mountain, unflinching.
“Why show me this?” Henry asked.
“The racing trail took a sharp turn at the middle of a steep descent there.” He pointed to a specific spot of the mountain flank, but Henry already knew which he was speaking of. The turn was legendary for its danger and racers had died in the past, slipping off it and tumbling down. “That is where I met Lenz Schmitt.”
“My father always said running was senseless and dangerous.”
“Did he now?” The thought seemed to amuse President Kurtmann. “Then we were both senseless young men. He’s the one who broke my winning streak the third year.”
“Broke?”
“He won, Henry.”
“What?”
Impossible. If Lenz Schmitt had won the Annual Mount Kairn Races, he’d know. Die-hard fans had visited every year and bought figurines from his father’s gift shop. One of them would’ve recognized the vendor, said something.
“Did he never tell you? History forgets I ran five times, not three. I ended second one year and never finished another. But it sounds better to say I won thrice, I guess, than to remind everyone of how fallible I am.”
“That’s what’s on the figurine: triple champion. Tell me.”
All these years, Henry thought of his father as a deserter with no history but his obsession for balloons. Andeal and Maniel had painted a different picture. Their Lenz Schmitt had a strong morale and the courage to act upon it—the kind of role model every kid should have. Nothing like the man broken by his wife’s illness and barricaded in silence, the one Henry had known. And now it seemed Lenz Schmitt had competed in the Races he earned a living from and won.
“When he won the first time I hated him. I couldn’t accept being beaten by an upstart nobody had heard about, not after two consecutive wins. He’d come out of nowhere and stolen my title and that didn’t sit well with me. So when the next year came, I sprinted ahead and ran too fast. I exhausted myself to put as much distance between us as I could, but when I reached this turn…I stepped on a loose rock and fell. I snapped my leg at the bottom, couldn’t move, and I was bleeding. Profusely. He stopped for me. He abandoned his first place to climb down the drop and help me. Neither of us won that year.” The president leaned on the railing and shook his head. “I learned later that he’d paid his university tuition with his winning prize the first year. I had my family pay for the following years. We’ve always had more than enough money anyway, and I owed him.”
Henry frowned. His father had never finished his major. Kinsi had told him he’d settled in Ferrea with his mom when they were very young and he was already on the way. Somehow, Lenz Schmitt had found the money to buy the decrepit tourist shop and a hot air balloon. Henry suspected he knew where from now. For an old friend of his, the president sure didn’t know a lot about his father.
Kurtmann turned away from the mountain. The wind threw his short hair about, sometimes obscuring his intense green gaze.
“Money meant little to me. It was easy to give away. You were right the other day. When things became hard, I failed those who depended on me. I didn’t have that courage, refused to risk anything for others. The time has come for me to pay my debt.”
“Wh-what are you saying?”
Henry’s knuckles whitened as his grip tightened on the railing. The president’s eyes had a feverish gleam to them. He straightened and his lips curled into a determined smile. For the first time since he’d stepped on the zeppelin, Henry saw the confident and determined man who had subjugated so many. With the Great Whale’s gray shape looming behind and the world stretching out at their feet, President Jacob Kurtmann seemed ready to conquer the world.
“On Union’s Day,” he said, “we will stride into the National Radio Tower and I will tell the world the whole ugly truth.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The long months of traveling with Seraphin had taught Vermen to read the Regarian’s moods better than anyone else. It was strange how well he knew the White Renegade now, how much he could read into a single grimace, a distant look or a smile. The knowledge had come by itself, from countless hours spent by his side, walking or sitting around a campfire, discussing the da
y’s events or plans for the future. Seraphin’s shoulders would tense before they met a new rebel, then ease as they were welcomed in. He would frown whenever his gaze fell upon the radio receiver, no doubts worried about Andeal. Hans would touch his shoulder, then, to draw him out of the dark thoughts. Seraphin would reward him with the strangest of smiles, sweet and ironic. Like there was a joke only the Regarian understood.
Perhaps the joke was the flutter in Hans’ stomach and how at peace he felt around his sworn enemy. Vermen preferred not to think about it, not to ruin the delicate balance of their relationship.
Their productive meetings with Altaer’s student leaders had put Seraphin in an excellent mood, yet in the last two weeks he’d grown more withdrawn, harder to decipher. Something other than the broadcasts was clogging his mind. When he’d awakened Hans at dawn and asked him to follow, Vermen hadn’t hesitated. He could hear the hushed anticipation in his friend’s voice and a strange, tentative stress.
Seraphin led him alongside a sandy road, to the top of a steep ridge. The slope plunged into a thick conifer forest and its tall trees almost hid the clump of roofs farther away, in an artificial clearing. A lot of Regaria’s villages were like this: small settlements scattered across the countryside, deep in forests or nestled near protective cliffs, with almost no farming lands around. Seraphin stared at this particular town, his lips pressed together. Birds sang in the distance, the only sound filling the two men’s silence.
Then Seraphin heaved a long sigh and broke it. “Do you know where we are?”
“No.” Vermen had little knowledge of Regarian geography and all the forests they’d traversed had lost him. “Am I supposed to remember every backwater town in Regaria?”
“This is Iswood.”
Iswood. Seraphin’s hometown. The hamlet that had seen Hans’ brother die. He tensed, scanned his surroundings as though he could find the splatter of blood and brain. He imagined a large tent, farther behind them in the field, with Seraphin in the entrance, pistol raised. In his mind the entire fabric was red, dripping with blood.
“Why am I here?”
His voice was rough. He didn’t dare turn to Seraphin. Vermen wiped his hands on his pants. What kind of game was he playing? Did he find the reminder amusing?
“I’m not sure,” Seraphin said. “I needed to come back. With you.”
Vermen did look at him this time. There was a strange inflection in the ‘you’ that brought heat to his cheeks. He hated it. He thought he’d grown used to the rebel, that he could ignore the spinning in his head, the way his heart slammed, the conflicting thoughts about him. It had taken two words with just the right tone to bring it all back.
“With me?”
“Sometimes I wonder…If there wasn’t so much bad blood between us, would you kiss me again?”
Hans froze. No, no, no. They didn’t need to make a big deal out of it. Those were Seraphin’s words. He’d convinced Hans to let it go, to both accept and ignore it at once. Why must he bring it back now? Vermen spun on his heels to face the White Renegade and stepped back. “Do you even listen to yourself? ‘Hi Vermen, this is where I shot your brother, please kiss me again?’ What am I supposed to say to that?”
“Yes?”
Seraphin’s eyes widened even as he answered, as though he couldn’t believe the word had just crossed his lips. Vermen stared. He sure couldn’t. The cheeky bastard stood there, breathless, wide eyes studying his reaction. Scared. More terrified now than with a gun held to his forehead by a sworn enemy. Vermen’s anger died before he retorted, whisked away by the realization Seraphin had never been more vulnerable. His throat tightened, his stomach lurched. Vermen raised a shaky hand, traced Seraphin’s chin with his thumb. When had he stepped so close? He snapped his fingers away with a scowl.
“I can’t.” He turned back toward Iswood. What was he thinking? Kissing his brother’s murderer? He had more honor than that. “This isn’t right.”
Seraphin cast his gaze down. “Maybe not.”
“It’s not. You killed him. It doesn’t matter if he was a cruel man, if you had good reasons. He was my brother and you shot him. I can’t do this to his memory.” Vermen took a deep breath to calm the shake in his voice. “You of all people should understand.”
Seraphin’s white fingers wrapped around his skeptar’s handle and he closed his eyes. “I do, in a strange way. I can’t tell if this makes me wish I’d never shot him or if it makes me want to put a second bullet in his forehead.” A bitter laugh escaped his lips. “I can’t seem to make up my mind about anything. Join the Union Army to help it bring Regaria under the Union’s fold, try to dismantle said Union later. Fight with my father, risk everything to avenge him. Shoot one brother, fall in love with the other.”
Seraphin’s voice trailed off. Vermen stared ahead, wishing he hadn’t said that, wondering if he could pretend not to have heard. They weren’t supposed to make a big deal out of it! Yet here they were.
“I can’t,” he repeated. “I can’t be that for you.”
“No, it’s okay. I shouldn’t have said anything. We have more important matters to think of.”
The Regarian’s shoulders slumped and, like Vermen, he set his gaze on the half-hidden town in the middle of the wood. It had all started here for them. It was strange to think that had Seraphin not put that bullet through his brother’s skull, he would be chasing down rebels or participating in the skirmish along Burgia’s borders, not doing his best to throw down an illegitimate government. He put his hand on Seraphin’s shoulder and turned his way.
“I’m not going anywhere, though,” he said. “We can see this through. I’ll be by your side until the end.”
Seraphin nodded in a small and repetitive movement and as he did his smile returned, determined. He was working himself into a better mood, but to Vermen it seemed forced.
“Perfect! After all, where would we be without the great Captain Hans Vermen?”
Dead, Vermen thought. He kept the comment to himself, however, and followed in silence as Seraphin headed down the slope toward Iswood. They were supposed to leave in an hour, but he suspected the Regarian wanted to pay respect to his family before they continued on the road.
Perhaps Vermen would, too, even if his brother hardly seemed deserving of the honor any longer.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Vermen contemplated the thousands of campfires dancing on the plains surrounding Reverence, wondering if it would be enough to make a difference. He had never expected so many to travel the long road to the capital, could not imagine what they would look like in the morning, marching across the city. Perhaps their passage through Threstle should have tipped him off. The small village, a day’s walk from the capital, was where Galen had started the virus. It used to be a bustling town on the highway from Reverence to Regaria, but the Plague had wiped out more than half its population. The place had a bad reputation now, condemned by superstitious and religious folks alike as being cursed. Not a lot of people lived there anymore. It had become more of a road stop on the way to Regaria than an actual city.
When they had arrived, however, the town wasn’t just tranquil. It was deserted. Almost no one had remained in Threstle. They were all down there, among the campfires, ready to join the protest. No wonder. For the last decade they had thought their home cursed, the tragic start of a terrible plague. Now someone told them their troubles weren’t due to fate. Galen Clarin had chosen their town to be the starting point of his terrible sickness. They had every right to be angry. Very few had decided to stay behind and it seemed the same could be said for many folks across the Union territory.
The radio screeched again and Vermen gave it a somewhat disgusted glance. Listening to Schmitt was painful and awkward. He missed Andeal’s smooth voice, reassuring and dynamic. How many more fires would there be tonight, had his friend still be the show’s host? But they still listened, just in case.
“Good evening, listeners, and welcome back!”
&
nbsp; At least his greeting had gotten more confident. Henry had kept broadcasting on a regular basis. He had to know he wasn’t good at it, but he’d tried. Hans had to give him that, at least.
“I won’t be long tonight. First, well, I wanted to tell you to watch for another wavelength tomorrow. I’m done with this static, and we’ll be switching things up for our special Union’s Day broadcast.”
Vermen wondered what he could mean by that. He could almost feel the field of small fires hold its breath for more information, but Henry changed topic.
“The big day’s finally here. It’s been, hum, great to have you with us on The Noodle Show. And I realized we’d never explained the name to you guys. Andeal named it, in truth. And part of it is a joke on me, but there’s more than that. When I asked him, he told me Galen’s news were a lot like my instant noodles. They’re easy and cheap, and sometimes it’s all you can afford. But there’s not that much to them, you know? They’re not a healthy diet. You don’t know me, but I love my noodles. Spent eight years living on them. So when I say that Galen’s news—his lies—they’re like that, I mean it. They are not healthy for us. And tomorrow? Tomorrow it’s time to change our diet.”
Henry had said it with a surprising amount of conviction. He’d hit his stride all of a sudden, his voice firmer than it’d been before. Vermen turned to the radio with a curious expression.
“It’s time. No more…no more noodling around! It’s okay to have eaten it all up until now. I did too. We all did. Not anymore, though. I hope I’ll see you all tomorrow in the streets, and don’t forget to change your wavelength!”
Vermen had laughed at his noodle expression. There had been a hint of silly pride in Schmitt’s voice he found amusing. As the characteristic screech of a finished broadcast emerged from his receiver, Vermen returned his attention to the large crowd.
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