Whispers of the Skyborne (Devices of War Book 3)

by S. M. Blooding

  Nix met my gaze. “The blood purity. This is the reason they destroyed so many of the smaller tribes.”

  I shook my head.

  “We don’t know what they’re planning, but they’re trying to wipe out anyone who will stand against them, and any who doesn’t assist with their plot.”

  “What does this mean?”

  “It means,” Neira said, turning her back to the stone table, gripping the edge behind her, “that we don’t even know what we’re fighting.”

  I POUNDED THE ROCK TABLE lightly with my fist, my shoulders tight. “I can’t, in good conscious, enter a war I don’t understand.”

  Neira’s cheekbones sharpened. “The Han and Lombardi are after my land.”

  “I will help you defend them.” I couldn’t help the guilt I felt for getting her into a situation much bigger than the one she’d already been in. “But that’s not going to be enough. What is Ino planning? What is she really after? If this liquid is really the key—” Which was hard to believe. “—then how do we stop her true plans?”

  “That’s your problem,” Neira said, her tone harsh. “The problems of the Great Families have always been with the Great Families until you came along with you plan for a League of Cities.”

  “Neira,” Aiyanna chastised.

  “No.” I held up my hand. “I agree with what she said. However, you did join in the games. At some point, you wanted to be a part of our world.”

  Sighing, Neira turned to the plank of wood on the wall behind her. She grabbed the rope beside it and used it to raise the barrier. A glass window was revealed, showing another room on the other side of it.

  Carilyn sat on one side of the table. A member of the Ino sat on the other.

  I frowned. “Simple interrogation and interview won’t determine how safe they are.”

  “No. But Carilyn and Aiyanna have a method of proceeding that I think you’ll find interesting. Just watch.”

  Aiyanna ducked out of our room and, moments later, reappeared in the other. She took a seat next to Carilyn.

  Neira sighed and dropped her gaze from the interrogation in the other room. “I don’t know what else to do. We don’t understand enough about this liquid or what it does. We do, however, have a spice. We add it to every meal. It seems to keep it…benign as near as we can tell. Our only other option is to keep them all out, refuse to allow them in.”

  “We might have the beginnings of yet another faction to fight, if we do.”

  Neira nodded.

  Aiyanna spoke softly to the Ino man, but I could barely make out what they said.

  I sighed, pushing off the table and walked to the window. “Can they see us?”

  “No. We cover the other side with the toxin from an octopus, and it shields us from their eyes.”

  Amazing. “What are we doing, Neira?”

  She folded her arms over her chest, narrowing her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean—” I flailed my hand to the window. “What are we doing with the League of Cities? What do we intend to do against the Families? Ino has reassembled them. What do we do? Do we hide? Do we fight?”

  Neira licked the corner of her lips, then wiped it. “What do you want?”

  “To keep innocents safe.”

  Nix snorted.

  I’d forgotten she was even there.

  Neira raised her eyebrows in agreement with Nix. “That’s a very nice sentiment, Synn, but what do you really want?”

  I pushed off the wall and raked my hands through my hair.

  “Why did you gather us all, Synn?”

  “My mother did that.”

  “No.” Nix straightened, her normally seductive expression missing. Her dark eyes shown genuine, as if, for the first time since I’d known her, she wasn’t playing me. “She invited the Great Families. You invited the rest of the world. Why?”

  I spun on her, flinging my hands into the air. “I wanted to do a better job than our parents did, than you did!”

  “Your parents.” Neira pointed her finger to the floor to punctuate her point.

  I released a frustrated breath. “No. Our. Haji’s and Keeley’s and Yvette’s. Mine. Nix’s. Yours.”

  Nix’s eyes crinkled.

  Neira flinched.

  “Our parents.”

  “So, you wanted to do better than the Great Families.”

  “Yes, but also the lesser tribes who did nothing as the Great Families—” How had I been so blind to what the Great Families had done, what they were capable of?

  Nix stepped closer to me, filling the silence I’d created. “And the Hands?”

  “You were slaughtering us. Keeley, Yvette, Joshua, Haji? They were left orphans because of you.”

  “You don’t think the Hands were only trying to be better than the Great Families, too, ridding the world of another tyrant? Keeley and Joshua are gentle people, yes, but their Family created the Han.”

  “You slaughtered innocent people, Nix. No. Those who created the Han were the leaders.”

  “Innocent people can still rise up.” Nix raised her face to the ceiling. “One woman, one man, one child can raise his voice and lead his people into a revolt. Or worse, they can take action and destroy others who had no part to play.”

  “That didn’t give you the right to murder them!”

  “So, your solution,” Neira said, ambling toward me, her lithe hands in front of her, “was to not murder anyone. Your solution was to replace the major power players, leave them alive, and create a new power.”

  “Yes.” Though when Neira said it out loud, I realized how silly and naïve that sounded. Even with that rationalization, I couldn’t quite work myself around the idea of blindly killing the old leaders. Because they were in my way?

  No! I cursed and called myself a hundred of the worst names I could think of. Because they had risen again and were intent on killing us. If someone were trying to kill us, we had the right to kill them right back.

  However, at the time, Ino Nami hadn’t been trying to kill us. Nix had thought she might. She’d thought she would imprison Oki, would execute her and all those in support of Oki. Could I kill people based on something they hadn’t done yet?

  No. That’s what Nix had done, and look where we were.

  Neira nodded. “You’re finally thinking, Synn. So, what was it you wanted to do?”

  I shook my head, lost and unsure. “Protect the innocent.”

  “And maintaining no blood on your hands.”

  “I have blood on my hands. The blood of my Family. That’s mine! The blood of the people of Egolda City. That’s mine. The blood of the people of Sky City. That’s mine.”

  “Then why stop now?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out.

  She looked at me over her shoulder. “Because you feel the stain of that blood and it is heavy.”

  Nix dropped her gaze to the table, her breathing long and slow, her expression pinched.

  A frown flickered between my brows as the truth of her words struck home. More than that, though, was this new insight to Nix. With one shattering expression, she became human and lost her monster veneer.

  Neira returned her attention to the other side of the window. The man stood up and exited the room. “Do you still want to make the world a better place?”

  I nodded.

  She glanced at me, flicked her eyebrows and watched as an elderly woman entered the room next. “You were wise to give up the leadership, Synn. You knew in your heart that you did not have what it took.”

  “You do.” My voice was low and quiet. “Neira, please. The league needs you.”

  “My people need me.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. Her tribe was easily ten times bigger than mine even before it had been destroyed. She had a larger territory to defend, bigger worries.

  “I see my people, Synn, all of them. Whether I agree with them or not.”

  My face folded in confusion. Where had that come from
?

  “You think you see your people, Synn. You do not. You think you accept those around you, but, really, you simply look over them or through them. Do you even know all the things that occur around you every day? The liquid. We all knew about it, yet you alone had no idea.”

  “Perhaps my father didn’t allow it into our tribe. There was a lot he disagreed with.”

  Neira shook her head. “I believe this is the one thing that binds the Great Families. The purity of blood and this liquid. What would happen if we tested you, do you think?”

  I snorted in disbelief, but stopped. Taking a step back, I thought back through my childhood. No. I hadn’t been a part of a tea ceremony, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been other times, other occasions.

  Like the transition dinner held for all adolescents before they made the trek to the mountains in search of a spitfyre fledgling. I hadn’t attended mine.

  “Think about it, Synn. Would your mother allow anyone not of pure blood into the Great Families?”

  “But the El’Asim are of mixed tribes. Our Mark shows that.”

  “But you’ve been of the same bloodline, the same Mark for several generations now. Nearly every El’Asim child born is Marked by lightening.”

  “Except me.”

  “Your father knowingly contaminated the bloodline.”

  I frowned. “So did my mother.”

  Neira nodded.

  “No. What was she planning? What was she thinking? What was her scheme?”

  Neira shrugged. “To create a new Mark? To create a more powerful one? To dirty the El’Asim line enough that your father could be stripped from the treaty?”

  I jerked back.

  “The Hands gave Nix the power to fix the political situation once and for all. The high priestess knew what was going on. She saw the plays for power and knew the only way to get rid of the Great Families was to destroy them, saving only those who had been unMarked, and thus, uncontaminated.”

  “No.” The idea was preposterous.

  “I repeat. What would happen were we to test you?”

  I stared at her. Was I being controlled? Was I like my mother? Could something overtake my mind and force my actions? Was that even possible?

  The bond with Nix. She had taken control over me. I’d had her voice inside my head.

  Her voice.

  Then again in Ino City, something had controlled my body, had spoken inside my head.

  The color drained from my face with a chill. “Do it,” I whispered. Perhaps my father never had introduced it to my system. Maybe he’d done that on purpose. Maybe he’d wanted to give me a fighting chance. Or maybe I’d been kidnapped too soon. I didn’t know, but if I did have that stuff inside me and that’s how Nix had controlled me…

  No. The entire idea was preposterous. Liquid didn’t control humans.

  The old Ino woman rose suddenly and turned to the glass, slamming her palm against it. “I demand to speak to the Marked one.”

  Neira, Nix, and I all jerked.

  Carilyn scrambled around the table, reaching for the woman.

  Aiyanna’s Mark unfurled from under the neck of her blouse, reaching for the old woman.

  She raised her hand and flicked her gnarled hand.

  Aiyanna’s Mark retreated, the priestess frowning as if fighting for control.

  Carilyn stumbled backward, her hands out as if fending off an invisible wall.

  The old woman turned back to the window. “I need to speak to the Marked one. I don’t have much time.”

  I glanced at Neira.

  Her mouth hung open. She shrugged.

  “So, which one is the Marked one?” I asked.

  Neira gave me a dry look. “Probably the one with the ‘most powerful Mark our world has seen?’ Perhaps that one.”

  This was stupid. But if this was the voice—somehow. I didn’t even begin to understand how it could be—I needed to stop thinking and act. I grabbed the doorknob before I’d even realized I’d made a decision, and opened the door.

  Nix followed close behind me. “I’m coming with you.”

  I grabbed her arm and forced her back in the room with Neira. “No. You stay here.” I closed the door in her face and continued to the other room down the tight, curved, dark hall.

  Carilyn’s bright blue eyes lit on me as soon as I entered the interrogation room. “Get out.” She strained against some invisible force.

  Aiyanna pressed herself against the wall furthest away from the old woman, her brown eyes wide.

  The old woman turned to me. She moved with the agility of someone much younger, her movements powerful as if she were stronger as well. Her eyes shown bright, as if time had been erased from them. “Marked One.”

  “I go by Synn.” The title made me feel more important than I was. I closed the door behind me. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the programmer.” The old woman leveled a hard look at me, and for one moment, I could have sworn I was looking at a man about my age. Though, I didn’t know why I felt that. “I developed the new nanites so you’d stand a fighting chance of surviving. The others haven’t cracked my code. I don’t think they’ve even discovered it.”

  I narrowed my eyes at the old woman. “I have no idea what you’re saying.”

  “Of course not.” She rolled her eyes, then placed her palms on the table. “Listen quickly. Your people, all of the people on your planet, are in danger.”

  I moved to the other side of the table and met her eyes.

  “We need metal, pure metal. Your planet doesn’t have that.”

  Who was “we?”

  The old woman raised a gray eyebrow. “Great. I am wasting my time here.”

  I raked my nails along my forehead. If this thing was reaching out for some reason, maybe she wanted to help. Though, the reason why was beyond me. “Okay. You need pleron. For—”

  “Your pleron isn’t good enough. We have to process it so much, strip so much of it away, we’re unable to keep much of it.”

  Answers. Finally. The Great Families had been focused on mining the pleron, if I were to believe Nix and Neira. Was this the reason why? Was this person, thing, whatever, connected to the liquid somehow? “What do you need it for?”

  The woman raised her head, her expression lightening as if something pleased her. “Everything. Your atmosphere kills us. Our hull is disintegrating. If we cannot repair our ship, if we can’t leave, we will die.”

  Ship. “What kind of ship?”

  “A star ship.”

  “A—” I choked on that idea. “A star ship.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you need different metals than what we have here to build your ship.”

  “To fix it, yes. When we enter into the atmosphere, there is a lot of fire. I believe you know what fire does to things that are flammable.”

  I did, though—a star ship. Really?

  “I don’t have much time left, so, please keep up. The purest pleron is used to create the nanites. The ‘living liquid’, as you call it.”

  Finally, the stuff had a name. “What are nanites?”

  “They’re like bugs made out of metal and I can program their brains to do what I want.”

  As a builder, that made sense, too. When I’d been designing the Khayal’s, I’d thought of building bugs to replace the creatures who cohabitated with us. In the end, it had been much more work than I’d anticipated, and it was just easier to dedicate the menagerie to their living space. “What sorts of things?”

  “Well, when they enter your blood stream, they can control your nervous system.”

  “My what?”

  “The things that control your body.”

  “Oh.”

  “They’re called nerves. And I can talk to you through them, like sending messages through your radio.”

  “Directly into my brain.”

  “You are quick, aren’t you?”

  It almost sounded like she was making fun of me.

  �
�I’ve created a code that you and Nix can hack into.”

  “Hack?” Somehow, I didn’t think that she defined the word the same way I did. “With what?”

  “Your mind.” The old woman glanced behind her, then leaned in. “Not all of us agree that we have the right to destroy your world in order for us to live.”

  “Thank you?”

  “Don’t thank me yet. There aren’t enough of us to matter. It’s a little like attacking a mountain with a wasp.”

  This woman, man, thing, whatever sounded a lot like me and how I felt going up against the Great Families.

  She raised a hand, and lowered it, palm down, to the table. “Learn as fast as you can. The nanites are connected to your Mark.”

  “Our Mark? How?”

  “We created them. It was a part of the original program, a way to tell those who had them from those who didn’t.”

  So, even those who weren’t in the Great Families had these nanites? “We’ve had these Marks for generations.”

  The old woman’s eyes widened, her lips quirking. “Um, yup.”

  I closed my eyes and pushed away from the table. “Then, if we have to drink this liquid, these nanites, how do some of the other tribes have them?”

  “You honestly think the only way to get the nanites is through a drink?” The old woman shook her head. “No. No, no. The nanites are everywhere by now.”

  That wasn’t heartening.

  “I’ve given you a way to use the same thing we control you by to control yourselves. I’ve tried to give you a fighting chance.”

  I opened my eyes and stared at the old woman. “All of this, this control and programing and bugs to get metal?”

  “Marked One—Synn.” The old woman shook her head, her expression drooping. “Our ship is dying. We’re dying. Are there any limits you wouldn’t cross to survive?”

  I’d like to say no, but I was more mature now. To say that would be to be naïve.

  “Talk to Joshua. I’ve been trying to feed him information.” She looked toward the door. “I have to hurry. I’m running out of time. When you and Nix are together, your ability to control the nanites is stronger. Use that.”

  “Why should we trust you?”

  “You shouldn’t.” She straightened her back that looked as though it hadn’t been fully straightened in several turns. “We’re close to finding a cure for the atmosphere. If we do, we’ll destroy all current life on this planet.”