Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series)

by J. Barton Mitchell

  Landships, dozens of them, what was left of their hulls rotting in the sun where they’d been discarded. Wood, it seemed, wasn’t of much use to the Menagerie, and that was pretty much all that was left. Broken and shattered, the once polished smooth timber frayed into splinters where the frames and the supports and everything else had been ripped unceremoniously loose.

  In all her life, Olive had never seen something so awful. Those ships were more than just wood and metal, they were homes, works of art, some of the most beautiful creations on the planet, sculpted together out of memories; wood and sheet metal and pieces of the World Before that would have just gone on rusting and dying if not for the Wind Traders. Every Landship Olive had ever been on, no matter how big or ugly or slow, had always felt alive … and the ones here had been murdered.

  It was a Landship graveyard.

  “One … quarter Chinook,” Olive ordered in a suddenly frail voice that barely carried. It took a moment for the crew to react, but they eventually obeyed, shortening the sail length as Tommy, the artifact handler, dialed the Chinook down to its lowest setting. The roaring wind quieted, the sails lost a little of their power, letting the Wind Rift move forward slowly through the remnants and memories lying in the sun.

  No one on board spoke as the ship passed through the wrecks. Olive could pick out pieces and parts of them that were familiar, placing those aspects to names, most of them ones she knew or had been on. Each recognition was painful.

  “Wind Sail,” Olive intoned as they drifted past one. “Wind Turn,” as they rolled by another.

  From around her, other voices joined her own, calling out the ships they recognized.

  “Wind Sky. Wind Rail…”

  It was some kind of strange, mournful acknowledgement, in voices that held the thinly covered truth that their own home would likely soon be among those wrecks, crumbling in the sun.

  “Wind Pulse. Wind Streak. Wind Fire…”

  On and on the names echoed, until Olive couldn’t take it anymore and she looked away and back to Ravan. The pirate studied her evenly. There was no challenge in her eyes, no mirth at the horror around them … but neither was there any remorse.

  “Hold on to the anger,” Ravan said, studying her. “You’ll get your shot for payback, everyone does. Just make sure when the time comes, you can pull the trigger. It’s never as easy as you think.”

  Olive studied the pirate. She had a strange habit of both proving she was exactly what Olive thought she was, and, at the same time, something completely different. They certainly had their differences, but they had a lot in common too. Both held positions dominated by boys, and they held their ground and their place fiercely, earning loyalty. Either way, Olive did not, and would never, truly like Ravan. The horrors she had just seen had solidified that. But she did respect her.

  The eight towers stretched into the sky, flames at their tops, and the city was arrayed beneath them. Slowly, over the years that followed the invasion, the pieces of a city had been built around those towers, circling them in ever-expanding platforms of wood and sheet metal, their foundations built out of old cars and concrete and other materials. Each tower became a “Pinnacle,” and each Pinnacle provided a single, specific aspect of the city.

  As they drifted closer, Olive could make out the Skydash, the complicated system of thick metal wires that ran between the various towers, and allowed the more brazen to zip along them with special hooks called Dashclaws. Olive had always heard about the Skydash. It sounded insane, just the thing you would find in a pirate’s den like Faust.

  Olive kept issuing commands, guiding the Wind Rift toward its berth. The platforms that ringed each of the city’s Pinnacles had been built up off the ground a good twenty or thirty feet, and the one around what Ravan had called Commerce was no different. A flat, wedgelike protrusion shot out from where the platform ended, a crude construction to serve as a dock.

  As they crept closer, Olive noticed something else. The way Avril tensed at the front of the ship told her she noticed it too.

  On the Pinnacle’s platform, all around the dock, moved a wave of people. Thousands of them, all pressed and packed tight, waiting for the Wind Rift to arrive, which made it all the more unsettling. They were expected. In fact, it looked like a damned hero’s welcome. The only problem was, Olive and her crew weren’t the heroes in this story. They were the trophies.

  “Another three degrees starboard,” Olive said, judging the distance to the approaching dock.

  “Aye, Captain,” Casper intoned, his voice uneasy. The ship kept inching closer.

  Tommy stood by the Grounders, ready to shut off the artifacts. Olive waited until the ship inched barely two feet from the side of the dock. It would be a perfect berth, she thought ironically, but she didn’t feel much satisfaction. It was probably the last time her ship would dock anywhere ever again.

  “Chinook, all stop,” Olive said, feeling her throat tighten.

  “All stop, aye,” Tommy intoned as he shut it down. The wind above them silenced as the artifact’s effect died. The Wind Rift settled into place, its momentum gone. They were still and motionless.

  The sounds of the crowd overtook everything … and it was deafening.

  It stretched all around, a mass of people that pulsed in every direction on the docks and into the Pinnacle platform, so thick it blocked the view into the city. The occasional sound of gunfire ripped the air as the pirates fired into the sky in celebration, chanting two words over and over.

  “Power. Profit. Power. Profit. Power…”

  Olive swallowed, tried to stay calm, but the chant and the roar and the gunfire pressed in on her. They were in the hot, open air, but everything felt claustrophobic.

  She looked at her crew and they looked back. She studied each of them with pride and amazement. Not one of the fourteen had jumped ship before making port at Faust. It was entirely possible they would all be killed here, who knew, maybe within the next five minutes … yet they had stayed at their posts.

  “I hope you know … how proud of you I am,” Olive made herself say. They deserved more than that, but she couldn’t find any better words. “Tie her off.”

  The crew set to work, closing her latches, stowing the sails, all routine activities none of them knew whether they would ever perform again. The crowd continued to roar around them.

  * * *

  AVRIL STOOD AT THE edge of the Wind Rift, staring down at the wooden beams of the dock, faded and gray from years under the burning sun. Another step … and she would be home.

  Home …

  She felt a twinge of pain at how easily the thought had formed. It felt like a betrayal. This was not home. This was a promise, a debt being repaid. Nothing more. She would suffer the tortures of this place, for honor’s sake, for Gideon, but it would never be home.

  “Might as well get it over with, dear heart,” Ravan’s voice whispered behind her, and it stirred a cold anger in her. “It is what it is.”

  Avril said nothing. She stared at the dock another moment, then stepped off and felt the ball of her foot touch down, and that was that.

  Only it wasn’t.

  The roar of the crowd, already loud and jarring, intensified. It took a moment for Avril to figure out why. Every stare, amid the thousands of pirates, was aimed at her. And it was shocking.

  They knew her? They remembered her? She stared at the faces in confusion …

  The crowd roared again as Ravan and her men stepped off. In Faust, the capture of a Landship was the most respected show of power you could achieve. On top of that, Ravan and her crew were returning from what had generally been considered a suicide mission. They were heroes. For a while, at least. Faust wasn’t a place where you rested on your laurels, it only remembered what you did today.

  Ravan stood next to her, staring at all the faces, soaking up the sound of the voices and the shaking of the wood under their feet. Behind them, the last of the people who were coming off disembarked.

&nb
sp; Holt landed on the dock, his stare blank, his face unreadable. Avril wasn’t sure why he had run from this place, but he knew there was a death mark on his head because of it. Coming back took a lot of guts, and yet it didn’t seem to even register with him.

  Avril remembered watching those ships explode, including the one with the Freebooter on it. A part of him had died with her, she figured. That’s what losing everything did to you. As he moved forward, his eyes met hers for one second, then he looked away again, but in that moment there was a glimmer of acknowledgment. Avril realized then that she and Holt had a lot in common now.

  The eight Pinnacles of Faust were clearly in view, at varying distances, the lines of the Skydash zigzagging through the air between them, and she watched as figures flew down them at dizzying speeds, one after the other, platform to platform. She noticed something else too, something different from what she remembered.

  Two of the Pinnacles stood out. Unlike all the others, they flew flags, and the flags were not what she expected. Where the normal Menagerie banners were red with a white, eight-pointed star, these were the opposite

  White. With a red star.

  Along one of those Pinnacles, among the platforms and structures of wood and metal built there, stood hundreds of other figures. But they weren’t yelling and cheering, they just stared down at her. At the top of one, out in front, stood a tall boy. Even from this distance, Avril could see long blond hair whisking out in the wind. His eyes, she could tell, were locked on hers.

  The Strange Lands had honed Avril’s instincts to sense danger, no matter how far, and right now, she felt menace from that boy. Whoever he was, whoever the group that flew that flag, they meant her harm.

  Avril just looked away. Before, she would have sought the kid out, found and killed him in his sleep, and whoever else might be with him. It would have been a simple task, he was only Menagerie, but, now … what did it really matter? Her life was over either way.

  From somewhere came three harsh bursts of sound. Electronic and staticky, they echoed through the Pinnacles of Faust. Whatever it was, the pirates seemed to recognize it. Their yells ceased, the stomping of feet went still, celebratory gunfire silenced. The crowd parted, making way for several figures. Avril’s heart began to beat heavily. She knew who was coming.

  Six Menagerie guards, burly ones with scars and malice in their posture, surrounded a man. Like Avril’s eyes, his were clear of the Tone, but that was to be expected, given his age. He was close to fifty, a rarity now, and it meant he was Heedless.

  The guards around him flanked out protectively while he stepped forward. He looked older than Avril remembered, the lines around his eyes were more pronounced, the gray in his short, cropped hair more visible. Like his followers, he wore only black military gear, but he donned his more professionally, his shirt tucked into his cargo pants, the legs falling around the tops of his boots. He wore the necessities of the new world in the style of the old.

  His black skin had the rough, leathery look of someone who had spent most his life in the sun. A trait of a worker, but Tiberius Marseilles had never been a laborer, even in the World Before, so it had always seemed a contradiction. He wasn’t particularly tall or athletic, there was nothing imposing or even threatening in the way he carried himself. It was only in his eyes where you saw the cunning and intellect that allowed him to create from nothing one of the world’s most powerful cities, a city of thieves and liars and brigands, and yet keep them all satisfied and convinced of his dominance.

  As he moved, she could feel his crystal-clear eyes lock onto her, and she fought the urge to try and hide, to put something between her and that man, but there was nothing to hide behind. He stopped in front of their group, and his stare finally left her, moving from one person to the next, studying each until it settled on Ravan.

  And when it did … he smiled. His hands cupped her face tenderly, he looked down into her eyes. “When, I wonder, will you finally disappoint me, Ravan Parkes?” Tiberius’s voice was soft, yet it carried weight, and though he didn’t speak slowly, he articulated each word with a meticulousness that seemed deliberate, as if every word was valuable.

  Ravan smiled back at him. “No time soon, I promise.”

  “You have brought back to me what I value most.” The words gave Avril a shiver. Sweet as the sentiment was, there was little emotion in it. She watched Tiberius reach down and take Ravan’s hand. “Congratulations, Commandant.” Then he raised the hand high into the air, and turned to the pirates that surrounded them.

  “This,” he yelled for all to hear, “is the taking of power!”

  The crowd erupted into cheers again. The dock rocked beneath Avril’s feet. Guns fired into the air. It was overwhelming. She could feel the tension from the Wind Traders on the ship behind her.

  “Tiberius,” Ravan said, when he’d lowered her hand. “May I present your daughter.”

  Avril swallowed. Tiberius’s gaze shifted back to her, studying her a long, inquisitive moment, his eyes raking over her, examining every piece, as if in evaluation, as if in judgment. When he moved to her, his smile grew, but, as always, it held no warmth. Whatever reason he wanted her back so badly, it had very little to do with fatherly love.

  “Avril,” he said. “You have grown strong…”

  He reached toward her … and Avril recoiled as if from a snake.

  She felt the anger rise within her. This man had taken everything from her; Dane, her life, Gideon … and he expected tenderness in return? He was right. She had grown strong, he had no idea how much, but he would.

  Tiberius gauged the reaction with only a slight sense of disappointment. He nodded, as if reaching some internal consensus. “We have time,” was all he said. “We have time.”

  Tiberius looked up at the Wind Rift, docked behind them. The crew was on board, staring nervously back. Olive stood out front, waiting.

  Tiberius glanced at each of the crew a brief moment, then simply looked away.

  “Kill the crew, take the ship,” he ordered. “Strip it of anything of value.”

  The words seemed out of place from such an unassuming figure, but the pirates expected nothing less. They moved for the ship, hands reached for guns. The crowd cheered again. Ravan frowned, slightly, but made no move to stop them. Above, Olive and her crew tensed, took steps back.

  Avril, however, had been expecting it.

  Her eyes scanned the figures of the two closest guards, their stances, noting their balance, deducing their dominant hands from where they kept their guns. It was enough.

  Her first two kicks were blurs of motion. The first groaned as his kneecap snapped, and his weight brought him to the dock.

  Before the second one could do anything, she spun, ripping the big hunting knife from his belt, then her knee found his groin and sent him to the ground with the other.

  She grabbed Tiberius’s right wrist, twisted and spun again, pinning him where he stood and rested the gleaming knife against his throat.

  The entire thing took maybe five seconds, and everyone on the dock and the platform beyond froze. A thousand gun hammers clicked into place, a thousand weapons raised, all of them at her.

  Avril just smiled. They wouldn’t do anything. Shooting her was shooting their glorious leader, and it meant right now, she held all the cards.

  Avril leaned in close so that her father could hear. “You wanted me home. Well, here I am.”

  She sensed no fear from Tiberius, his body felt relaxed. He just craned his neck to look down at her. It infuriated her, his lack of response, the absence of fear. She pressed the knife into his neck. “You will relinquish any claim to the Wind Rift. They, at least, will not be yours.”

  Where before his voice had seemed cold, now it was almost warm, affectionate. “Not taking that ship would be denying your people their share of profit and power.”

  Avril dug the knife in again, feeling the anger build. “They aren’t my people.”

  “Then why react so vio
lently to the suggestion?”

  Avril paused, staring at the man hatefully. “What would your men do? If I slit your throat right here? Even knowing who I am?”

  “They would kill you, girl,” Tiberius said.

  “Exactly. I will fight and die unless you tell your mindless thugs to leave that ship and its crew alone. I swear it. What happens to your legacy then?”

  The two stared at one another. Tiberius smiled again, and this time, there was warmth in it. The sight only made Avril angrier. “I’m proud of you. For taking what you want, not asking for it like a Wind Trader. Perhaps your time with the White Helix was worth it. Perhaps Gideon and I had more in common than I assumed.”

  “Say his name again, and I will kill you,” Avril whispered dangerously. “Gideon was more a father to me than you ever were, and you are nothing alike.”

  If Tiberius was hurt, he made no indication. He just studied Avril, as if for the first time, long and intensely, and there grew a satisfaction in his face. He liked what he saw, and it made Avril nervous.

  “We will grant my daughter’s wish, as a gift for her return,” he announced out loud. “This ship and its crew are hers, no harm is to come to them. You see her strength. You see she is worthy of us. With her here, more power will follow.”

  The crowd stared back a moment, unsure … then it erupted into cheers again. More gunfire lit up the air.

  Avril slowly released Tiberius, letting him stand, and she studied the pirates, perplexed. They were even more roused up than before, more excited, and Avril wondered if this hadn’t been Tiberius’s plan all along.

  Her father turned and stared above them, far above, to the Pinnacle that flew the strange, reversed Menagerie flag. The boy at the top, the one with the blond hair, stared back a moment, then did something interesting. He saluted Tiberius, as if acknowledging a grand performance.

  Who was that boy, Avril wondered. And what was going on in this place?

  Tiberius looked away and this time his gaze settled on someone else, someone at the edge of the dock, behind everyone else, someone who had remained unseen until now.