She glanced behind her, where her mother had the safe mounted to the bookshelves. She could feel the resonance of the crystal, even through the metal. Worst case, she could find it after this war was over. Prin might be heavily outnumbered, but no one in Prin could compete with her in Source ability, not to mention her ten years of training in infusing hand to hand combat with Source. The Xenai were just as untrained as most Prinites—all they had was numbers. She could end the war, then return to solve the mystery that hummed at her from the safe.
19
Fiher
There is nothing that keeps these insignificant beings from being crushed other than our own mercy. We have given them every chance to turn from their path, to accept the way of the new world, and to join with us. And now! The only recourse left to us! Is to storm and rage and swallow them whole!
Silence fell over the Shae home, but Fiher stood still fidgeting only with the wooden figurine in his left hand while he sensed the girl in her bed, waiting to move. He leaned against the tree beside him and sighed.
Reckless.
He had felt the emotions of many mothers before riding the crests and dips of Ayna’s experience this evening. He had never fully understood them before tonight. Even though he was not a Source-caster himself, he understood the dangers and how foolish Shara had been. He had felt her as she played with the Blight crystal. Even worse, he had felt it. Each scream and moan the crystal had released had grated up against him with a terrible familiarity.
And now, Shara would be sent to the war, as if it was safer. He knew he needed to head back to his cave outside Prin and start getting himself ready to follow her into her deployment, which would bring up a whole new series of challenges for him. Sneaking into a town was one thing, but following a girl in the middle of an army that was hunting his own kind was another thing entirely. But, he was in no rush to solve these problems and prepare to face them.
He could sense the girl’s eagerness to play with the Blight crystal again, and he felt drawn to find out if she succeeded. So he waited in the shadows, reaching out for her, seeing the shape of her experience from the safety of the woods outside her home. He felt her presence moving through the home and her anxiety ratcheting higher the closer she got to her goal undetected, followed by a letdown that disappointed his own curiosity but eased his fear.
He felt her retreat to her own room and stayed vigilant until the haze of her sleep blurred his sense of her, so he left.
One more stop to make.
The smooth wooden figurine had ended up in his hand without him thinking about it as he watched Shara. The hint of paint that had once adorned it had rubbed off long before he had taken it, and in the splashes of moonlight around Prin, only the remnants of bright red around the mouth were visible when he looked at it.
He scurried into the shadow of a tall building as the trees ended and the true heart of Prin life sprang up around him. Cursing to himself, he drew on the obsidian implant to thicken the smoke barrier around him, allowing him to disappear into the shadows of the small city. The weight of the shadows pressed into him, making him feel sluggish and tired. He pushed past the feeling, reaching out to the edges of his Intuition, looking for any other presence with Intuition so that he could avoid them. The guards that patrolled were few and mostly Terran, without the gift of Intuition. He made his way around them easily enough.
He came to a short building with a red door. The presence inside was one he had seen near Shara many times before, in the cave, and at their home tonight. Old man. Despite the man’s Terranity, he took the long way around the block, not daring to cross near the door or windows. If any Terran would sense and find him, it would be the Old Man.
He emerged from his detour on the far end of the street from the house with the red door, standing before another small house. The door was plain, unpainted wood. Drawings of figures were drawn on the rocks and walkways, but had faded unkept, as if their creator had no more interest in them. A series of lost toys sat in long grass, speaking again to the disinterest of their owner. He glanced around from his spot of shadow. The front of the home was well lit by the moon.
He glanced around, crouching down to lean on one hand and clutching the figurine in the other. He pushed hard on his Intuition to feel for anyone in an alley or window that could see the small home, even though he knew that there was no way to be sure that he was safe.
Inda.
He tightened his hold on the figurine and dashed up to the small porch of the home. Feeling exposed in the moonlight and aware that the thick smoke around him would give him away more quickly if anyone looked right at this moment, he dodged to the right of the door once he cleared the steps, approaching the window. He placed the figurine on the windowsill and brushed it with his fingertips before launching himself over the side of the patio and into shadow once again.
He trotted through the shadows keeping his watch for patrols, but with a light step. He had been in and out of Prin so many times; he felt he could not get caught.
Unless you do something reckless. Like that. Or like Xarie did.
He pushed back the thoughts of Xarie’s body, crashing down in convulsions as her head split open on the marble for all of Prin to see. He knew it had been her choice. She had chosen to help Shara. But, every year, their band grew smaller. The free Xenai were caught and killed along with those who were not free. Soon, there would be none of them left.
Who will save us, then?
We will take this world and we will live with the powers we have found — we will be immortal! We will take from them their future and we will make from it the foundation of our eternity!
II
The Price of Power
20
Kingston
Peace was never more than an illusion stretched over the weathered bones of conflict like old, worn skin. Kingston had always known this; now Prin knew it as well.
He ignored the blinking indicator of the LightTab on the worn table and shuffled around the kitchen making tea from what few herbs they had grown this past summer. The crisp air of snowfall was seeping through the thin wooden bones of the house that had been his long before a small town had sprang up around it. He had brought people into the town. Half the residents were those who stopped on the way to or from Prin and hadn’t ever left.
Lia had been one of those travelers before they had killed her. Before he had killed her—he knew he was to blame. Somewhere in the layers of grime he could never quite clean, remnants of her still existed on the counters and chairs. Most of the dirt and oils in the home belonged now to him and their son, James. Wherever he was—probably out in the fields, practicing with that cursed sword, swearing his vengeance on the Xenai for the death of his mother. Kingston never had the heart to tell him the truth of their situation.
Kingston turned from the aging home and looked out the small window. It was one of two windows he had salvaged from old buildings and repurposed when he built the home. He watched the occasional person outside shuffle past, clutching cloaks close them. Century stood where the winds from the mountains accumulated force. In summer, it was a welcome chill, but even now, before winter had fully enveloped the world, the gusts hit with such strength that it felt hard to breathe. He watched the people struggle against it—the people that he had thought he could save. Many years ago, he believed that building up a home for people was his penance. Now that he knew what he came for them from the west, he wondered if he would ever be free of what he had done.
The tea had finished steeping in the pot, so he poured it through a sieve and into his ceramic mug, fingering the cracks where it had broken and he had put it back together. The warmth seeped into his hands. Kingston felt his age as he sat in front of the LightTab, staring at the blinking dot in the corner as he pulled the blanket down from where it rested on the back of the chair. Wrapping it over his jacket and around him, it draped down to the floor. He sipped the tea and stared at the flickering screen for a moment longer. It wa
s tempting to sit back and wait. He had spent his life trying to correct mistakes; didn't he deserve this? To let others bear the burden?
He already knew what the message was, having read it a week earlier when he received it, and then marked it unread to respond to later. An appropriate response still eluded him. Telling James of the message was not an option, as his nineteen-year-old impulses would have pushed him towards a quick, decisive 'yes' and Kingston’s reluctance would have sparked another fight that somehow led back to Lia’s death. So he sat alone and sipped on his tea.
As he sucked down the last drop of warmth, he considered opening it, but still had not planned his response. Instead, he clicked into the readers on the SatNet. He paged through his flagged threads: tales of the progress being made on the Xenai docs, released nearly a week prior. No one had gotten anywhere other than one woman from Prin. Tani. He found the headline he was looking for that contained her name and clicked into it. He scanned through the latest update, highlighting a chunk of it and saving it to his folder of clippings from such releases.
“We are closing in on a two weeks of solid, positive tests on animals. Given this, we are looking to begin the next phase of our project on Terran patients in the next few weeks. Our patient roster is full, but we are continuing to look for new cases to add to our waitlist.”
The post included anonymized LightTab messaging information in the message. Every time someone’s LightTab loaded the data, the system changed the anonymized address that was displayed and embedded it with an expiry, so he didn’t bother grabbing it in his highlight. He would have to come back if he ever reached out to her. He picked up his tea and took a sip, forgetting the cup was empty, sucking in cold air instead. His chest tightened in response and he started coughing, placing a hand on the table to stabilize himself as the fit of coughs tore through his body.
He sat up straight once the fit had ended and wiped the tears that the coughing produced from the corner of his eyes. He looked around at the house that had been his home for 25 years.
What am I holding onto?
He clicked on his folder of clippings, selecting those he had organized under ‘Tani’ and read through them all, forming the picture of what she had done so far in his mind. It was brilliant. She was the only one that had focused on illnesses as the target of the experiments. Everyone else had tried to recreate the original docs as they were laid out, not seeing the systems that were being woven together. Within days of the documents’ release, Tani had seen the systems, and had seen that sick people were the way to merge them: fusing them together at the spot where there was a chink in the armor. All of this monumental work from someone who was a ghost from the Prin Underground. He had tried to find out more about her life from before her work on the Xenai documents. There was nothing. Very few people had no history on the SatNet. It only made him more interested in her.
He smiled to himself, knowing it would be only a matter of time before he returned to get the LightTab information and send her a message. For now, he had to deal with the decision in front of him. He opened the message from Ayna Shae and read it again.
Kingston,
I know you feel a deep obligation to Century, and I understand that completely, you know I do. It is the same obligation and duty that I feel for Prin. But, I must ask you again to come to Prin. Bring your family and any members of the Century community that want to come, we will find homes for all of you. We have passed the point where we can be surviving communities: we need to be survivors, together. Please, come. I have attached the latest reports from our scouts at the front about the Xenai army that is amassing to the west. I will need you to lean on to keep Prin running when so many are leaving to fight, and so many more staying here for safety.
He didn’t look at the new data. It would spell out death for Century. That is the only reason someone like Ayna would volunteer information to someone like him. If he did not go, and take his people with him, they would all die. He had chuckled at her arrogance the first time he had read the message. Of course, she would think Prin was the only place for them to go. Prin may be more advanced than the other towns, but the other survivor havens had the advantage of not being under immediate Xenai threat. Ayna’s condescension grated against him, but in the days that followed he had forced himself to push it aside to consider the options objectively.
Prin might be under threat, but if Prin fell, Ceafield and other towns would be next. Safety there would be temporary. Prin had promise no other city had. Technology from the generation ship, resources from farms and the relative safety of fortifications, and something within it that the Xenai wanted. When they moved east, they had not swept across the western plains indiscriminately. They had made a line for Prin, only wiping out the settlements that stood between Shouding and Prin. The city had an unknown bargaining chip, which gave them hope. Perhaps Ayna realized this—but Kingston was certain that she was too buried in Prin’s everyday problems to see this simple truth. With the right leadership, it could flourish into something that could not only survive, but rule. Perhaps aiding in that effort could be the penance he had failed to find here in Century.
He opened a response and formed his words , deliberating each sentence and inspecting them multiple times for any conveyed meaning he did not intend.
Ayna,
I fear that you are right, that the time has come for us to make the move to Prin. James and I will arrive October 2. I am not sure who from Century will accompany us at this time, but I am sure most of Century will trickle down to Prin over the next few weeks, bringing our remaining cattle and harvests.
When we arrive, I would like to immediately discuss the Underground situation, as I cannot justify telling my people to come to Prin for them to be shoved down there. I know your options are limited, but I have several ideas from monitoring recent developments on the SatNet.
Looking forward to seeing you again, as always.
- Kingston
21
James
James sat at his mother’s spot at the table for the last time. His two small satchels were by the front door. The repaired moto that his father had paid extravagantly for waited outside, the sleek black reflecting the gentle tones of the early morning. It would ferry him off to the relative safety of Prin, where his father would try to trap him in safety from conscription and the Xenai. It would be no different from Century unless James made it different. Even though no Xenai had entered Century since that fateful night 13 years ago, his father felt James would be safer in Prin. The Xenai patrols were thicker now. Every few days someone saw a wandering band of Xenai, usually a few miles to the west somewhere. He allowed his father to have the argument, even though he was confident that Kingston was not actually concerned for his safety.
Everyone deals with grief in their own way. His father had buried himself in his work leading Century, moving up from an unelected but respected leader of the group, to an official government figure. The only one they had. He had also spent a good deal of time on the SatNet, coordinating trade with other colonies and with Prin. James had turned himself into the weapon to exact his revenge on the Xenai.
After too many years of spending hours in his father’s room, looking at the deep red stain made by his mother’s blood that had become a part of the wooden floor, he had to do something. He looked at the stain from every angle, comparing the dark remnant of his mother to the darker spot in the middle, that had to be a minor wound she inflicted on the Xenai moments before she died. He recalled what he could: her movements that he could feel but had not seen. If she had been a second faster, if she had turned this way to dodge rather than try straight for the sword… The endless scenarios rolled over him as he stared at the bloodstain.
The stain went with him when he walked out to the fields to train. He would play out what happened that night in their home. Repeatedly, he would dodge and turn and weave, as if he could train hard enough to go back and make the movements that would have saved his mother’
s life.
His father thought he would be safe in Prin, that he would attend University and become a leader. James knew the second he settled in to his room in Prin, he would go to the nearest recruiter to enlist to serve the Pact—to kill Xenai.
James stood, walked to the door, and slung his bags over his shoulder before exiting. He didn’t look back.
Prin was charming. The eclectic architecture that had grown up with the city, formed around a crashed generation ship, had come from all over the world. Every city or town expressed the personality of its rulers through architecture and design, so when Prin had been forming, the Fowler family’s Victorian London inspiration was the first influence that became apparent. However, the Illara roots of the Shae family also came out in the organic lines and the decorative pieces. Homes were mostly wooden, manipulated from the woods and foliage around them before being treated. They whirled together to form walls and roofs in sweeping, wide arcs with bulbous tops that reminded James of the old Russian buildings he had seen on the SatNet. In the middle of emerging styles of architecture were the older brick buildings that had been in the area before the Sundering, and the giant metal and ceramic corpse of the Nagata. The old world engineers had designed the generation ship for efficiency. Her already-lean appearance had turned gaunt when the first survivors of Prin stripped her, repurposing many of her parts around Prin. The crater that she left behind her when landing had grown in quickly with trees and other foliage. Over eighty years of continual expansion had filled the crater in with small homes as well. Beyond the new buildings, the city had expanded into the remains of the one that had lain there before, blending the newer styles into the broken down remnants of the buildings that had been left behind.
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