by Thomas Locke
“Sean will do just fine by my parents.”
“He’d better, or he’ll find himself sleeping out in the fields! Listen to me, lad. The Ambassador and his wife are both powerful people. They will make you worthwhile allies.”
“Or dangerous adversaries,” Elenya said.
“That will not happen because I will not let it!”
“There is the small matter,” Elenya reminded the old woman, “of my having run away from home.”
“Ah, lass, I do like your spirit. You remind me of myself, back when I was still young enough to breathe fire. Now listen well, lad. What I am about to tell you will make all the difference in the world. When they arrive, you will greet them as a man in love. You will show them contentment and happiness. There is no wound, do you hear me, idiot? There is no lingering shadow. You will show them that all is well with you, because you and their beloved daughter are united against the world. And they will accept this because they must. No mention will be made of any past quarrel. If her mother brings it up, you will ignore the comment. You will show by example what the future holds. The four of you united. As a family. In peace.”
“You sound like my father,” Elenya said.
“Then he is a wise man indeed. Now go and fetch the tailor.”
The two ladies fitted him out like he was a doll headed for a display cabinet. Sean protested once, or tried, but the two women joined together and smashed him down with such force even the tailor winced. After that Sean held to what dignity he had left, and submitted because he had no choice.
They dressed him in a civilian’s counterpart to the dress uniform of a senior Assembly officer. The fabric was the most expensive available, similar to the grey sheath that Elenya wore. The color was one shade lighter than midnight blue, with darker seams running down both legs and forming his high collar and cuffs. But where an officer would use the attire as a backdrop for his or her medals, Sean’s garments were completely unadorned. Even the buttons were hidden. It was a severe and elegant declaration of who he would someday become. Elenya said he was almost too handsome. Even Insgar declared herself moderately satisfied.
The dinner was served in the torch-lit central garden. Sean had no way of knowing for certain, but he suspected the bevy of servants was Insgar’s strategy at work, reminding her guests that she was a woman of wealth and power she could flaunt. Which she did. The tablecloth was woven with jewels that caught the firelight, the service solid gold.
Sean had no idea what he was eating and had little appetite. But silence worked well enough for him. He responded when someone spoke to him directly, which Elenya’s mother never did. The woman was elegant and severe and highly intelligent, a trained observer who radiated disapproval and yet who was caught off guard time and again. It was all Insgar’s doing. The old woman punctuated every silence with a statement that rang with two hundred years of authority. How she was finally satisfied that she had identified a worthy successor. That thanks to Elenya’s guiding hand, Sean would grow into the adept ready to lead them where they next needed to go. On and on the comments came, until even the mother’s slow-burning ire was, if not extinguished, at least dampened.
When it was finally over and the guests departed, all Sean could think to say was, “Thank you.”
Insgar lifted her chair up to where she could look down upon him. “You had best live up to my predictions, or I will redefine the word misery.”
“I didn’t ask—”
“Oh, hush with your nonsense. Why must the youth of every generation be forced to relearn the lesson of responsibility?”
Sean started to point out what he had already done in that regard, but Insgar lifted her chin a fraction, a gesture so like Elenya he had to smile.
When Insgar was certain she had stifled his response, she conceded, “You really are a handsome lad when you stop with your pouting and your nonsense.”
“I don’t pout.”
Elenya moved closer and slipped her hand in his. “Sean, your pout could win prizes on several planets.”
“There, you see? I knew she was the one for you.” Insgar turned her chair about. “I suppose you two will be leaving me soon.”
“I want to show Sean my twin world,” Elenya said.
“There are several duties you both will need to perform first, mind.”
Elenya squeezed his hand, stifling another futile protest. “Sean knows, Mistress.”
“Well, come and visit with me when you’re done gallivanting.” Her voice remained firm even as she vanished into the shadows. “We have futures to plan. Two of them.”
62
Sean’s duties consumed a blur of days. First came Tirian’s funeral, which Dillon and Josef and Carver had jointly insisted be postponed until Sean was able to attend. They buried the former Examiner with all honors in the field of lava bordering the Praetorian Academy. The cemetery was rimmed by the symbols of all the Assembly planets. The entire Academy and numerous other visitors filled the arena and the surrounding plain. Tirian’s place was among those who had fallen in the Cyrian station, comrades in arms now. Sean sat upon the speaker’s platform, chilled by a harsh winter wind. But for once he did not mind.
Then came the ceremony marking the reopening of the Cyrian train station. The planet’s leaders insisted that Sean cut the ribbon, a ceremony that seemed as inane and useless on Cyrius as it did back home. Once that was over, Sean took a few days off at the loft, mostly because he wanted to reacquaint himself with his world. At least, he tried to convince himself of that. But especially in those hours spent with his parents, he felt increasingly that what he was actually doing was fashioning an internal farewell.
Then it was back to the Academy, this time for days and days of meetings and conferences and questionings. The one positive note to it all was the presence of Dillon and Carver. Their former instructor had accepted a senior role, at least for a time, so that he might help supervise Dillon’s training and direction. They tried to talk about Sean’s future direction as well, but he was not ready.
The hours were exhausting, made worse by the nightmares that followed every interview on what he discovered inside the alien’s mind. Slightly better were the days given to teaching Watchers how to fashion duplicates of their own. When he could, Sean took to transiting back to the loft, where he and Elenya would have a quiet meal, sometimes with John, mostly alone. The professor missed his little girl, but he knew she was happy, even in the stark barrenness of Academy housing. Sean wanted to offer more, and tried to show the professor both warmth and gratitude. But the process of being squeezed dry by the senior Guards staff continued to open old wounds.
It was Elenya’s patience that ran out first. She accused the officials of asking the same questions for the third and fourth time. And to both their surprise, their strongest ally in ending this process was Tatyana. The Counselor was being tapped to train as an Ambassador and considered herself in Sean and Dillon’s debt. Sean didn’t know how he felt about that, and Dillon’s scorn was evident whenever they were alone.
The night before Dillon left for the Academy, they ate a solitary meal on Insgar’s patio. When they were finished, Dillon leaned back in his seat and asked, “You ever study the sky?”
“All the time.”
“I don’t recognize a single constellation. Hardly a surprise since we’re on the other side of the galaxy.” He gave that a beat, then asked, “You ever mind, you know, all the strangeness?”
“Not even a little.” Sean slid back so he matched his brother’s pose. Head on the rear of the seat, looking up at the gleaming river of light. And the three moons. One a whitish-grey sliver, one a ghostly pale touching the tree line, and one a ruddy golden globe directly overhead. “Not even at the worst moment.”
“The aliens still invading your dreams?”
“Less than before. Elenya’s helped. A lot.”
“Sean . . .”
“Yeah?”
His brother was silent for quite a while. Sea
n didn’t mind. When it came to something deep, Dillon always had trouble with his words. Sean listened to a night bird call, a melody of silver chimes. The sound heightened his sense of entering new realms. New adventures. He would heal, and he would go on. He was certain of that now.
Finally Dillon said, “We’re going to stay pals, right? I mean, with all the changes . . .”
Sean straightened in his seat. When he was certain Dillon was not going to say anything more, he said, “Look at me, bro. Whatever happens. The bond stays the same.”
“So . . . we’re good.”
“Totally. Permanently.”
Dillon rose to his feet. Only then did Sean realize that was why he had come here. On his last night of freedom. “I guess I better go see Carey.”
“Good luck tomorrow,” Sean said.
Dillon flashed his grin. “What could they possibly do that’s worse than what we’ve been through?”
Sean smiled back. After his brother departed, he leaned his head back on the seat and stayed there for hours. Watching the Serenese moons.
The day of his formal release, Sean wanted to return either to the loft or to Insgar’s home. But Elenya was having none of it. “We have earned a break. Not just from work. From all we have ever known. I want us to discover my twin world together.”
“You’ve already been there. Many times.”
“As a child. And for brief visits with my family. But never far beyond where I first landed. Now I want to claim it.”
“With me.”
“Of course with you. Where are you going to call home, Sean? The professor’s loft? Sneaking in and out of a world that rejects the Assembly’s existence?”
“No. I’ll go back, sure. Especially to see our folks. But that time is over.”
“Then where? Cyrius?”
“Definitely not there. Not now, anyway. Maybe never.”
She offered a smile that was far too beguiling for her age. “We could always ask my parents to take you in.”
“Oh, right. Your mother would love that.”
“My sisters think you are very handsome.”
“I am not moving in with your dad. Ever.”
“So this is a holiday with a purpose. I would love for you to consider Helene as a possible home.”
All the messages included in those few words crowded in around him. He fashioned a single response, the only thing that made sense. “I’m ready.”
1
The back roads of Virginia had always been Landon Evans’s best friend.
In the months after his father died, Landon had started escaping the world by driving out here. It was incredible just how empty the Virginia countryside could be. Three hours to the east, the Washington sprawl spread like fungus. So many people, all of them enduring the terrible drive through terrible traffic, day in and day out, so they could sit at terrible jobs and pretend they were close to the nexus of power. And just beyond their reach was this.
Mailboxes saluted Landon as he passed farmhouses with acres of pasture, cows and horses and early summer crops. The world smelled sweet as the first dawn. Out here, Landon could pretend his mother wasn’t hiding from life inside her prescription haze, that he wasn’t suffocating in his community college classes, that he really could look forward to something better.
And finally, at long last, it did appear that he could. Look forward. Anticipate. Think of a future that was bigger than just getting by.
For one thing, his uncle, the senator, had offered him a gig as an intern. With pay, no less. Starting in eight days.
For another, he had been accepted at UVA. All his CC credits transferring. Scholarship. Not quite a full ride, but hey.
Which meant the money he was earning from this FedEx gig could go toward his share of an off-campus apartment. Because one thing was certain, he was not going to stay home and commute.
Landon had already given his notice to FedEx and was at three days and counting. Then he was moving into his uncle’s garage apartment, spending a summer in Georgetown, working the Hill, learning what it meant to breathe the heady air of Congress in emergency summer session.
Right now he had two hours left in his eleven-hour shift. Landon had been at it since long before sunrise. Quick stops for breakfast at five thirty and lunch at eleven. His shoulders and neck and back were aching, but in a good way. He didn’t even mind the grainy feel behind his eyeballs or the way the truck’s cab was filled with the ripe smell of a long, hot day. Because he was saying good-bye. Not to the roads. He would always be coming back here. Hopefully someday to live. No, Landon Evans was saying farewell to somebody else’s idea of a life.
Suddenly three people appeared out of nowhere, standing there beside the road, looking straight at him. Then a very weird-looking lady pointed something at his truck. Two seconds later, Landon’s motor died.
Sean Kirrel suffered through the most boring class ever.
Current events and future trends. Each situation introduced by a list of wars and crises not even the planets involved still remembered. And taught by a professor named Kaviti. The name fit the guy perfectly. Kaviti was a pompous bore. He paced across the front of the class as he droned, “Recently in the news and on the minds of the Assembly is Cygneus Prime. Its history is marred by almost constant strife, which they claim is now behind them. The leader of the largest fief on Cygneus Prime at the onset of the Second Interplanetary War was Aldus, known to his loyal subjects as Aldus the Great and to his foes as The Butcher. Thirty-seven years ago, he defeated the last remaining opposition and established a governing council that rules the entire system, with one small exception known as the Outer Rim . . .”
Students at the Diplomatic Institute were called Attendants. Sean hated the word. It made him feel like a student in a school for glorified servants. Which, of course, was the intention. In truth, much of Sean’s dissatisfaction had nothing to do with the school or his classes, and everything to do with Elenya. His soon-to-be-former girlfriend had been moving away from him for months. Sean felt increasingly helpless to do anything about it.
“The latest Cygnean conflict began as a dispute over the mineral-rich territories that form the entire planetary crust of the world known as Aldwyn . . .”
Professor Kaviti was one of the most highly decorated members of the diplomatic corps. Not to mention a Justice in the Tribunal Courts and an alternate voting member of the Assembly Parliament. Sean figured the guy had bored his enemies to death, suffocated them with facts as dry as old bones. Sean endured two hours of this every day.
Kaviti liked to pick on Sean. Elenya insisted he was taking it all too personally. That was just the professor’s way with all newcomers, she contended. But by this point in their relationship, Elenya had started treating all his concerns with an element of disdain. Regardless of what she thought, Sean knew the professor was taking aim. What was more, Kaviti was not alone. A segment of the faculty resented Sean’s presence. He had been sent here after less than sixty days as an initiate. Most Attendants arrived with five to ten years of Assembly schooling under their belts. What was more, the institute had been ordered to take Sean. By a planetary Ambassador and the founder of the Watcher school, no less. The fact that he and Dillon had saved an entire world from alien invasion only heightened this group’s desire to find fault. There was no question in Sean’s mind. Kaviti intended to down-check him and kick him out.
Kaviti’s drone swam into the background as Sean picked at the open wound in his heart. He replayed the arguments that had laced his last three meetings with Elenya. She had a beautiful woman’s ability to show outrage when she did not get her way and the intelligence to win every fight. She was gone now, off on some research assignment she would not discuss. Elenya had also told Sean not to come visit, which had pleased Elenya’s mother to no end. The last time Sean had stopped by their home, the lady had actually smiled as she bade him farewell.
Sean was so lost in the misery of love gone bad, he almost missed the Messenger�
�s alert.
The first bong resonated through the classroom like a musical punch. After the second and third, Dillon popped into view. It was almost comic, since Sean was pretty certain Dillon had no right to use the Messenger’s official alert. His twin brother was a cadet at the Academy, the military arm of the Human Assembly. The twins shared a contempt for the Messenger Corps and the kinds of transiters who settled for that life. The Messenger’s know-nothing existence was too close to the bureaucratic lifestyle that had framed their parents’ world.
But Sean did not grin at his brother for two reasons. First, he would have gone into serious debt for any reason to leave this class behind.
The second was Dillon’s expression. As grim as his uniform. Dillon threw the teacher a parade-ground salute. “Apologies for the interruption, Ambassador. But Attendant Kirrel has been summoned.”
“Summoned?” Another thing about Kaviti was his ability to dismiss with a sniff. It was claimed that, years after graduating, classmates of the Diplomatic school still greeted one another with an elongated snort. “By whom?”
“That is none of your concern, Ambassador. Sean?”
“See here! Just one minute, cadet!”
But no scrawny arm-waving was going to stop Sean’s escape. He was midway up the aisle and asking, “Where to?”
“Treehouse. Go.”
“Already there,” Sean replied. And he was. Bang and gone.
Dillon arrived an instant later. The air was compressed by his tension.
Sean demanded, “What’s the matter?”
“Landon Evans, remember him?”
“Sure. Carey’s cousin.”
“He’s been kidnapped.” Dillon pointed at Sean’s closet. “Change into civvies. Jacket and tie. Hurry.”
Thomas Locke is a pseudonym for Davis Bunn, an award-winning novelist with worldwide sales of seven million copies in twenty languages. Davis divides his time between Oxford and Florida and holds a lifelong passion for speculative stories. He is the author of Emissary and Merchant of Alyss in the Legends of the Realm series, as well as Trial Run and Flash Point in the Fault Lines series. Learn more at www.tlocke.com.
