by Frank Morin
Lord Eoghan and Lady Fenella surrendered Crann as soon as the combined armies showed up. Under Ailsa’s leadership, General Rosslyn had commanded her forces to cooperate. So far, no new fighting had broken out. It seemed even the queen’s most ardent followers were content to wait and see if the queen returned. Most of the troops had taken the news of her death with joy and were happy to surrender.
Verena still scarce believed so many of their core team had survived the terrifying battle. Ilse had been like a sister, and Verena had broken down into tears many times in recent days, thinking of Ilse’s valiant sacrifice.
Connor stood near the impressive waterfall feature in the center of the room with Kilian and Aifric. He spotted Verena and waved her over. She smiled to see him looking so recovered. A shadow of pain still lurked in his eyes, and they had talked for hours in recent days. The sacrifice of his affinities had torn him apart inside, and he still needed time to heal. She felt convinced that eventually, the fact that he still had some affinities would help him recover his optimism. He’d already managed to apply his higher-level basalt affinity internally and confirmed he could still frack. That had helped immensely, and no doubt he’d continue to find creative ways to utilize his other remaining affinities.
She gave Connor a kiss and slipped under his arm then asked, “What’s going on? Aren’t we supposed to be meeting with Shona and the others?”
The others were standing not far from the queen’s great, pompous throne, near a long, gleaming wooden table cluttered with scrolls and maps.
“Soon. We were just checking how belligerent Water was feeling today,” Kilian said.
Verena grimaced. “Still causing trouble?”
Aifric nodded, her voice shifting into the lovely accent of Nuzha, her Sehrazad mind-sister. “She resents our access worse than a tribe whose secret wells are breached, but she cannot prevent us.” She flashed a white-toothed grin, and Verena was glad she seemed more relaxed around so many Obrioners. The fact that they’d defeated the queen’s great army had left her in great spirits.
Kilian added, “It’s all she has left. They’re firmly shackled by the laws of nature again, and they hate it.”
“They seem more firmly imprisoned than ever,” Connor said. “It’s like Porphyry drove them pretty far back out of green.”
His description of Porphyry’s action still puzzled Verena. She sensed that Porphyry was more than they had ever understood. If Connor could discover more power-grade porphyry, maybe they could investigate that. Then again, maybe the world was better off without anyone able to tap the dangerous stone.
“I had hoped they wouldn’t be able to interfere,” Connor added, glancing at the waterfall. Verena noted a brief look of longing on his face. The inability to sense water hurt him more than the loss of any of the other elements. She wished she could help.
“She’ll calm down eventually,” Kilian said. “Until then, we need to keep the advisory in place for all tertiaries to refrain from tapping their powers as much as possible.”
“I hope that helps convince the high houses to accept terms for peace sooner,” Verena said. In the last week, Spitters and Water Moccasins had struggled with wildly inconsistent responses from soapstone. Sometimes they got only a fraction of the effect they sought. Other times, they were flooded with ten times the amount they wanted. Several accidents had caused dozens of injuries. Water and Air were doing everything in their power to make life difficult for the Petralists who had blocked their escape.
“Ailsa has some ideas how to guarantee we get peace before beating down every high house,” Kilian said. He extended an arm. Nuzha gave him a dazzling smile and took it, and the two headed toward the conference table. Ailsa was there already, along with Shona, Ivor, Hamish, Jean, Wolfram, and even General Rosslyn. Fyodor was sitting in for the Arishat League. It was shaping up to be a day full of vital, but probably boring discussions.
A laughing Nicklaus flew right through the waterfall from the far side, emerging from it without even making a splash.
“Don’t waste blind coal,” Verena chided.
“You want me to train, don’t you?” he asked with that “I’m innocent” look that was such a blatant lie, but so cursed cute, she hadn’t figured out a good defense against it.
Kilian called back to his many-times great nephew. “Train, but don’t waste blind coal.”
“Fine,” he said, rolling his eyes at the limitation. “Will you come see my underwater secret mission boat, Uncle Kilian?”
“Absolutely. Later.”
Nicklaus sighed grandly, but he wouldn’t complain too loudly or Kilian would threaten to send him back to Merkland again. Christin had been frantic with worry when they contacted her to let her know Nicklaus was safe, but Kilian had insisted Nicklaus remain close to him until they confirmed the elementals posed no more direct threat to him.
Nicklaus flew in lazy circles around Verena and Connor. “Water yelled at me this morning again.”
“That’s almost every day,” Connor commented.
Nicklaus nodded. “I just call her a liar, and she sulks. The others don’t talk to me as often, but they’re still angry too.”
“You’ll tell us everything they say,” Verena reminded him. She still wondered why they kept communicating with him, but figured it had to do with his almost-ascension. He’d touched greater power and drawn closer to the elementals than almost anyone.
It was a terrifying thought.
Ever since that near-threshold event, Nicklaus had shown a significant increase in his Builder powers, and a remarkable understanding of the most complex mechanicals. He might not have completed his ascension, but he got close enough that he’d grown in ways they still hadn’t yet quantified. She yearned for the time to spend testing and analyzing the boy with Hamish. They might learn so much.
“Of course,” Nicklaus said, then grinned wickedly. “Even the curse words that Air taught me?”
Connor laughed, so Verena poked him in the ribs. He coughed and assumed an almost-serious expression. “Yes, you should. For pure documentation purposes, but make sure to forget them after you repeat them to me.”
“I promise,” Nicklaus said sincerely. The little fibber.
That ongoing contact with the elementals represented a potential terrible threat. He was so brilliant, there was a risk Nicklaus could again design a mechanical powerful enough to push him to that Builder threshold. The recent battle was fresh enough that he seemed to understand the danger of such a disastrous idea, but time might dull his memory and his anger at the elementals might eventually be overruled by his insatiable curiosity.
Verena wasn’t sure what they were going to do long term, but they had to make sure no one ever again approached that threshold. She hated the idea of suppressing information, but how to guard its use was a tricky question.
Connor turned them toward the conference table, but Nicklaus turned upside down as he floated next to Verena and asked, “Do you want to hear everything that serpentinite tells me too?”
They both turned to stare, and Verena exclaimed, “What?”
“She talks a lot, and most of what she says is silly.” His smooth forehead crinkled in thought as his face slowly reddened from hanging upside down in the air so long. “She’s not like the others. She thinks they’re old meanies. Sometimes I think she’s really young, like me!”
He seemed to really enjoy that thought. Verena glanced to Connor, not sure how to respond. He looked shocked, but asked, “When did Serpentinite start talking with you?”
Nicklaus shrugged and started air somersaulting again. It was one of his favorite hobbies when forced to hover in place for long. “During the big storm. At first she seemed really surprised I could hear her.”
“I’ve never heard her. The other elementals said she hadn’t reached consciousness,” Connor said thoughtfully.
Nicklaus nodded. “Yeah, they’re real mad that she’s around. She said she followed my bridges.” He giggled and a
dded, “How can she do that, Connor? I broke all of my bridges, didn’t I?”
He didn’t respond right away, but looked lost in thought. Verena said, “Maybe when you touched that threshold you helped her find you.”
“Maybe. She said I’m the very first person she talked to, and she likes me. She has so many questions.”
“What kind of questions?” Verena asked quickly. She didn’t trust the elementals, and hearing of a new one suddenly appearing and trying to make friends with Nicklaus made her very suspicious.
“Everything. She gets excited about everything. It’s like she’s been asleep her whole life. I told her not to trust the liars, and she promised to warn the others.”
“Others?” Connor asked, snapping out of his reverie.
“Yeah. She has some other friends who are just waking up too. They’re sleepy and they haven’t found the bridge that she used yet, but she’s sure they will.”
That worried Verena. Four angry elementals were more than enough trouble. They’d known about serpentinite, although with the affinity broken for most people, she doubted serpentinite could really cause too much damage.
Connor took the news very differently. His eyes lit up and he asked, “Did she tell you anything about her new friends?”
“Only Metal. She said he’s nice, but a little proud because he’s so shiny. I’ll tell you what he says when I hear from him, okay?”
“Make sure you do,” Connor said, trying to sound casual, but his arm around Verena’s shoulder tensed. He looked like he had ten thousand questions, and she realized why he seemed so excited. He couldn’t restore broken bridges, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t establish affinities with new elements.
The potential was astounding, although tons of challenges rose to pester her with dozens of questions she couldn’t answer. How would they find those elements? What stones would their powers filter through? How could they figure that out? Could Connor or Nicklaus converse with them before a convergence point was established. Did they want to?
“Okay, bye,” Nicklaus said abruptly and accelerated away fast, shouting, “Hamish, let’s race around the palace before you fall asleep.”
“I’m going to a meeting,” Hamish replied, sounding amused.
“Yeah. You always fall asleep,” Nicklaus shouted at him before zooming around the waterfall again.
Verena said, “New elements. How is it possible?”
“I don’t know,” Connor admitted, looking more enthusiastic than she’d seen since before the battle. “We’re going to have to spend a lot of time with Nicklaus.”
She nodded. That boy might have lost his affinities, but he still held the keys to so many secrets in that little head of his.
69
Cake Is a Better Motivator than Sticks
Ailsa called the meeting to order, and Connor grinned to see his aunt taking charge. She was the secret mastermind behind much of their success, so she deserved the honor of hosting the meeting with so many of their core team.
She smiled at the gathered company and said, “I am grateful that so many of us have survived, and I am optimistic about the future of Obrion.”
“We won the most important battle, but we’ve still got most of the high houses arrayed against us,” Shona reminded them.
“For now,” Ailsa said, and Connor was convinced she’d already plotted the best course for dealing with every single one of them.
Ailsa glanced at Aifric, who sat beside Kilian, then at Connor, who sat opposite them. “First, I hear there’s an update on Evander’s situation?”
Aifric grinned, and Connor smiled with her, happy they started the meeting with the good news. Her features shifted slightly and Student Eighteen took over. “Absolutely. We’ve determined that it should be possible to transfer Evander into the empty mind of one of the queen’s servants.”
Most of those gathered around the table hadn’t heard the news yet, and they all cheered. Connor felt proud, and immensely relieved that they’d figured out a solution. Evander’s death had been very traumatic for Connor as much as for Evander since they’d been linked through chert. He’d feared if the giant lingered in his mind too long that he would expire for good, and he’d have to deal with the man’s death all over again. Evander was not living in a full partition like all of Aifric’s mind sisters, and Student Eighteen had confirmed what Connor suspected. Evander could not survive like that for long.
They’d discussed several potential options, including creating a mind partition for him, but that was a high risk option that Connor was happy they hadn’t needed to use. He liked Evander, was immensely enjoying the close connection they shared, but couldn’t quite imagine living the rest of his life with Evander sharing his mind.
Evander himself had proposed using a mind-wiped servant. Their minds were like empty vessels, waiting to be populated. Connor, Evander, and Student Eighteen had spent hours probing a couple of those servants, discussing ways to make it work.
Student Eighteen briefly outlined their findings. “Evander is not locked into a partition like we are.” She tapped the side of her head. “His consciousness is untethered, so therefore mobile. The mind-wiped subjects we probed are empty of identity and individual thought. For all intents and purposes, they are brain dead, kept moving and obeying specific commands by Queen Dreokt’s implanted orders. We can remove those and transfer Evander into the mind instead. He should be able to take control and make the host his permanent home.”
“Children grow into adults, while the elderly lay down in the long sleep, but the cycle of rain continues for all time,” Evander said in Connor’s mind.
He smiled, sensing some of the obscure meanings conveyed by the message. He was glad Evander embraced the idea of finding a new body to call his own. Most people would be so traumatized by losing their first, Connor doubted they’d be capable of attempting the bizarre solution.
Much of Evander’s knowledge had begun seeping into his own subconsciousness, making him vastly smarter than before. Evander was an understated genius, and they’d spent a lot of time over the past week in deep conversation. They could converse for what felt like hours in a matter of minutes, and Connor would miss that close association.
Not enough to keep Evander in his head forever, though. Verena had been very supportive, but he sensed her discomfort over the idea of Evander hitching a ride on their planned life together.
Ailsa said, “Very good. I know a man who will serve as an excellent candidate. He’s in Donleavy, but used to be a Sentry, so I like to think that if he understood what was happening, he would approve the transfer.”
She then glanced to Ivor and asked, “How are arrangements for troops progressing?”
“The populace seems very agreeable,” Ivor reported and turned to Rosslyn. “It appears most of your troops welcome the transition of leadership from the queen to Ailsa and yourself.”
Rosslyn nodded. “Indeed, most of us served out of fear. I’ve been encouraging my troops to keep an open mind until we see if promises of peace prove true.”
Connor was finding that he liked Rosslyn more and more. She had agreed to work together for peace, but her words reminded them subtly that she would hold them to promises that they intended to seek a peaceful transition to a legal monarch.
He sincerely hoped they would. They had to portray strong force in Crann to ensure the critical stronghold surrendered quickly. Hopefully that would generate even more momentum for their cause. They’d arrived with a huge army and the four most operational Battalions, packed with all of the Thunder Towers and battle mechanicals they could salvage. It made for an intimidating display.
“Now, let’s review troop distribution, communications channels, and priorities,” Ailsa said.
Connor stifled a groan as the meeting moved into the boring parts. Shona and Ailsa did much of the talking, with Rosslyn and Ivor adding a lot of information too. They discussed every high house and their leaders, their known troop strength, their
alliances and likely positions regarding succession.
Those four seemed to thrive on the complexity, and Verena too looked enthralled. Kilian seemed to grasp every nuance, and Aifric’s lips moved silently as she conversed with her mind sisters. Wolfram seemed to know all the players too, and contributed lots of information his spies had gathered over the years. Fyodor mostly listened, but Connor didn’t doubt the Arishat League were already preparing three dozen treaties they’d want signed by Obrion’s new leadership. Hamish had slipped the faceplate of his helmet closed and somehow turned it opaque. He was sitting upright, but Connor would bet the next six months of desserts that Hamish had already fallen asleep.
Eventually they focused on the question of candidates for succession. Unfortunately, it was abundantly clear that many of the high houses would want to make a play for the throne. The queen’s passing created an enormous power vacuum. Word would reach them soon, if they hadn’t heard already, and they’d begin negotiating deals and alliances at the speed of fracked Striders.
“I have no doubt that Lord Eoghan and Lady Fenella have already sent out runners to their closest allies,” Shona said.
“I would be disappointed in them if they hadn’t,” Ailsa said, then turned to Rosslyn. “Just as you’ve already sent messengers to your father. If he has not yet made an attempt to seize the throne, I would be surprised.”
Rosslyn didn’t try to lie, but met Ailsa’s gaze and shrugged. “Do you blame me, or him? I must see to the continuation of my house. He’s one of the queen’s high counselors, and one of the most influential high lords. He’s a logical choice.”
“Except his rule would guarantee a long and protracted war,” Ailsa replied. She did not look upset by Rosslyn’s actions. She knew Rosslyn and her father, High Lord Feichin. She had worked closely with them both for months. Connor didn’t know the man well, but he’d heard enough to believe Ailsa. Feichin was powerful, and he would fight to maintain the status quo. He would see the revolution as a threat to his power, the rise of Guardians as a direct threat to his house.