by Keri Arthur
Once dressed, I heated up the remains of the soup while Kaiden stripped off and quickly bathed. Once we'd eaten, we gathered everything together, slung the rifles over our shoulders, and moved across to the cavern’s entrance.
There was no sign of Oma in the cloud-streaked skies, but she was close.
No Mareritt near mountain.
Where are they?
In valley of moon. They look at pieces.
No doubt ensuring the destruction of hope had been utterly complete. I closed my eyes against the stab and drew in a deep breath. It didn’t really help. I suspected only time would, and even then only partially.
I repeated the news to Kaiden. He nodded and led the way down the mountain. The Black River tumbled past us, its spray drifting through the air, not only clinging to my hair and dampening my clothes but also making the path more than a little treacherous. I had to grab at nearby trees more than once during the long descent but made it down in one piece. We followed the riverbank until we found a crossing point and then, keeping to the trees, moved toward the road. The entrance of the tunnel became visible and very much looked like the maw of some ancient but monstrous animal.
Kaiden hunkered down at the edge of the forest and studied the road and the tunnel for several seconds.
“What’s the—”
He held up his hand and cocked his head to one side. After a moment, I heard it—the distant rumble of a vehicle.
“That doesn’t sound like a scooter.”
“I think it’s a supply train and may actually be the better option in the current circumstances.”
I frowned. “A supply train doesn't sound like it'll be fast—”
“They're not scooter fast, but they can still move along at a reasonable clip. The advantage will be the fact they're less likely to stop a train.”
“Up until the moment they realize there’s one missing.”
“Yes, but the trains have no exterior identification, so they can't use drakkons to spot the missing one. Add that to the fact they won't expect us to be in Mareritten, and we have a good chance of getting a clean run.”
“What happens once we take the train beyond Break Point Pass? Do they still have a military encampment near Esan?”
“Yes—and I daresay it’s far larger than the one that existed back in your day.”
I frowned. “Which basically means they have Esan surrounded—how on earth has the city survived two hundred years, given the Mareritt ability to create ice in the air and freeze foe?”
“Their ability to freeze is dependent on the strength of their mages. It's only recently we've noticed the uptick in its use.” His voice was grim. “But we've had two hundred years to figure out means to at least combat its use in Esan itself.”
“What sort of technology can combat the use of air as a weapon?”
“Full protection suits and shelters with air conditioners designed to regulate and warm incoming air.”
“Machines can't work when frozen.”
“Yes, but their mages don't have unlimited resources or strength—otherwise, why would they have used ground forces to destroy Zephrine and the mages to assault the aeries? The only explanation is a lack of strength and the need to concentrate on what they considered their most important aim—to destroy the fighting drakkons and to claim future graces as their own.”
Two aims that had been totally successful thanks to meticulous planning. And for the first time I wondered just how much Zephrine's downfall was due to arrogance—to an ingrained belief that no matter what the Mareritt threw at us, the drakkons and kin could handle it.
“Would the defenses you’ve developed work against something like the ice missiles?”
“Given what they did to the coruscation, I very much doubt it.” He touched my arm lightly, as if to counter the wave of grief that rose within me. “Which is why we need to get back to Esan and warn them. They can’t counter what they don’t know about.”
If there was some way of countering them. Something within suspected that might not be done easily—though that might be nothing more than pessimism.
But even if we did nothing more than free the drakkons and take out a couple of their mages, it would hamper their progress, perhaps for another century or two. And by then, drakkons might have regained full size and once again dominate the skies.
I returned my gaze to the tunnel. “How do you plan to stop the train?”
“I’ll step out in front of it.”
I gave him a long look. “Despite your protests to the contrary, you really are insane, aren’t you?”
He grinned. “They won’t run me over.”
“Once again, I like the assurance with which you say that.”
“For the most part, trains only have the driver and a guard—”
“Which only means they're less likely to stop.”
“Except I won't be armed. Trust me, they will stop and check my ID. It's common procedure for any Arleeon found within a restricted area.”
“What if they decided to run you over instead? Or simply stop and shoot you? That's going to put a serious dent in our hijack plans.” My voice was dry. “And in case you’ve forgotten, your Kai identity has been blown.”
“Yes, but while the guard is checking my ID, you can sneak into the train and take out the driver.”
“Because he won't be alert for such a possibility, now will he?”
Kaiden's grin flashed. “Which is why we'll do this on a curve. Neither of them will see you until it's too late. Shall we go?”
I shook my head at the anticipation in his tone but nevertheless rose and followed him through the trees. The sound of the train grew closer; Kaiden stopped just beyond the halfway point of a sharp turn and motioned to the other side of the road.
“You hide over there—it's the same side as the control center's door. Once the guard moves out to question me, you sneak up and take out the driver.”
I nodded. “Good luck.”
“Good hunting.”
I snorted and then cut quickly across the road. After finding a large enough tree to hide behind, I checked my rifle—just in case things didn't go according to plan—then slipped the knife into my hand. Blue light ran down the blade's sharp edges, as if in anticipation.
The growing rumble of the train suggested it wasn't far away now. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, tension thrumming through me. After another few minutes, a silvery pod came into sight. It was long and bullet shaped and obviously used the same sort of repulsion technology as the scooters because there were no wheels or sleds in evidence. Five of the bullet-shaped pods went by; there were at least another eight that I could see. The coupling links connecting each pod were thick and heavy—if we needed to disconnect them at any point, it would not be easy or fast.
As the ninth pod passed my tree, the whole train came to a shuddering halt and the vehicle silently settled onto the ground. I peered out from behind my tree but couldn't see the control pod—it was already well around the corner. I ran to the side of the train and waited a second to see if I'd been spotted. When no alarm sounded, I carefully moved forward. But I'd barely traversed five pods when there was a loud hiss; a heartbeat later, the control pod's door opened up and out. I ducked into the gap between two of the pods, my knuckles white with the force of my grip on the knife. After a second, the clomp of boots on metal echoed, quickly followed by the crunch of stone as the guard moved to the front of the train. Once he'd disappeared from sight, I continued on toward the control pod, pausing briefly at the ramp to peer inside. The driver's attention was on Kaiden and the guard. I took a deep breath, silently bid Túxn to grant me luck, and then moved.
The driver didn't hear my approach—not until my arm wrapped around his neck, and by then it was too late. I stabbed him, held him still while he died, then released him and wiped the knife clean on his shirt. And felt absolutely no remorse whatsoever. In fact, there was something very satisfying in taking a Mareritt life up
close and personal rather than from a distance or from drakkon back. If I could have killed them all the exact same way, I would have. Such a desire wasn't possible, practical, or even smart, I knew that, but that didn't in any way negate it.
They’d killed my family. Destroyed my sister and my drakkon. I would never, ever forgive them for that.
I unclipped the driver and hauled him out of the seat. Kaiden appeared at the bottom of the ramp. “Drag him over here—we're going to need him at the other end of the train.”
“Why the other end?”
“They have control pods at front and back. Saves them turning the thing around.” He grabbed the guard and hauled him over his shoulder. “Hit the door close button on your way out.”
I did so, then followed him to the rear of the train. There were eighteen cargo pods in all, and concern rose. “Are you sure we're going to get enough speed out of this thing? Wouldn't it be easier to dump the cargo and just run in the control pod?”
He pressed the guard’s hand against the control pad. As the door opened, he glanced back at me. “We'll do that if it becomes necessary, but right now, those cargo pods are our ticket through Mareritten. Besides, we might be able to use their contents. You want to tell Oma we're about to head into the tunnel?”
I did so, then added, Meet us on the other side of the mountain. Let us know if you see any patrols. And fly high, just in case they have their drakkons out.
Drakkons out. Still hunting you, not me.
Doesn't mean they won't be, Oma, so be cautious.
Will.
I closed the door and then climbed into the passenger seat. The control board looked even more complicated than the ones on the scooters, but Kaiden didn't seem fazed. After he'd pressed a number of buttons and switches, the train rose from the ground and was soon moving forward at a reasonable clip. He then reached underneath the main panel, felt around for a few seconds, and pulled out a small metal disk.
“Locator beacon.” He dropped it onto the floor and smashed it under his boot. “I've also disconnected the security features, including fingerprint access. It'll make things easier.”
We entered the dark maw of the tunnel, and the forward lights came on. “How long will it take us to get through the tunnel?”
He glanced at a screen to his right, where a red dot was moving along a green line. “According to guidance, thirty-eight minutes.”
I grunted. “It's one hell of a long tunnel.”
“So was the one at Break Point. It just didn't feel that way because we were under threat.”
“Putting it mildly.” I sat sideways on the chair to study him. “How about we fill in the time with you telling me a little more about yourself?”
He raised an eyebrow, his expression amused. “There's not all that much to know.”
“You said you had five younger sisters—are they your only siblings?”
The shadow of guilt and grief ran briefly through his expression. “No—I've also three brothers, two of whom are still alive.”
“The third being the one who died via the sword—the one whose death you feel responsible for?”
“Yes. It was his first raid and I was in charge. I should have taken better care of him. Should have—” He stopped and grimaced. “But I didn't, and he was caught and executed.”
Which no doubt explained why he and his father were at odds. Both of them blamed him for the death.
My gaze went to his neck. “Is that where you got the scar?”
He nodded. “If we hadn’t had a medic on the team, I would have bled out.”
The brief flash of bleakness in his expression suggested that in the darkest hour of his darkest dreams, he sometimes wished he had. It went some way to explaining why he took part in so many dangerous forays into occupied Arleeon—it was a means of making his brother’s sacrifice have some meaning, as much as an avenue of revenge.
“Was your brother executed straight away?” I asked softly.
He glanced at me, his expression once again carefully controlled. Which was pretty pointless when the connection between us roiled with anger and guilt. “No. He’d no doubt been thoroughly interrogated first.”
“You were there. You witnessed it.”
“I had to be. I couldn't save him—there was just too many of them. But I didn't want him to die alone.” He paused and then added softly, “Someone had to sing his soul onward to the next life.”
I wanted to reach out and touch him, to offer the comfort I suspected he needed and yet would reject. “If you had tried to rescue him, you'd now also be dead.”
“I know. That doesn't make accepting his death or my part in it any easier.”
“Nothing ever will.” Not for him, not for me.
“No.” He glanced at me again. “What about you? Are the tales of your family true?”
A smile twitched my lips. “That depends entirely on what you've heard about my family.”
“According to the legends, the Velez line had a reputation for living as hard as they fought—and that the hardest of them all was, in fact, Hattie Velez, the ninety-three-year-old matriarch.”
Memories stirred, and there seemed to be a lot more of them now. Ice remained in the deeper sections of my mind, but perhaps in shattering the coruscation, the Mareritt had diminished its magic within me. “I think she got worse the day they stopped her and Teela from flying missions—she wanted to prove to all and sundry there was still a lot of life in her old bones.”
“Why did they stop them from flying?”
“Teela was losing her sight—it's a problem many drakkons have when they hit senior years. It's why so many were used to protect the aeries.”
Which also meant they'd probably have been amongst those frozen and then smashed when the Mareritt had attacked Zephrine and claimed her aeries. I studied the darkness beyond the front window for a second, trying to marshal the sadness that rose. It wouldn't have been a great way for anyone to die, but for someone so vital, so full of life and love and fierceness, to be taken so easily, without any warning or the chance of taking any Mareritt down with them... At least the rest of my family would have gone down fighting. Even my youngest sister—who'd barely been fifteen at the time of the coruscation—had been proficient in weapon usage.
I hoped they made the Mareritt pay for their victory.
Hoped they didn't suffer when they died.
“I wasn't aware drakkons no longer able to fight were relegated to the aeries,” Kaiden said. “I thought looking after the eggs and the drakklings was the province of the males.”
“To a point yes, but drakklings are a hungry bunch and require constant feeding to ensure full development.”
“So the older drakkons guarded the aeries while the males did the meal runs?”
I nodded, even as curiosity rose. “How can you not know any of this? Granted, Esan came close to falling, but she didn't, so why has so much knowledge about drakkons and kin been lost?”
“It hasn't been lost, as such,” he said. “But there's little point in studying the glories of the past when we've spent two hundred years on the brink of annihilation.”
An annihilation that had begun with the destruction of all I'd known. The fist in my chest briefly tightened.
“But for the first time in all that time, we have hope,” he continued softly. “We have you and Oma, and that gives us a starting point.”
I met his gaze. Knew he was talking more from a personal point; that the hope he held was one of a future that didn't involve fighting and death but rather love and family.
It was a hope I desperately wanted to share, and yet one I didn't dare reach for. I had no idea why Túxn had chosen me, out of all the kin to have flown into the coruscation that day, to survive, but I doubted it was to give me what had otherwise escaped me two hundred years ago. There was always a price to pay for her favors, and I had no doubt mine had yet to be revealed.
“One kin and one drakkon do not a grace make, Kaiden.”
He smiled, though that determination was back in his eyes. He knew my thoughts. Knew, and was absolutely rejecting them.
“As I said, it's a starting point. And if we can free other drakkons, then hope will spread through Arleeon. That's all we need—hope.”
Hope was a powerful motivator but on its own would never be enough. Even if we could free more drakkons, we still needed to uncover what the Mareritt were doing in the White Zone and then find a way to stop them. And that was before we even began the long push to remove them from our land.
Silence fell between us, and the miles hummed by. A scooter went past at the midpoint but gave no indication they noticed anything untoward—no doubt because they were as blinded by our lights as we were by theirs.
We came out of the tunnel into a landscape that was both stark and beautiful. The autumn coats of the tamarack trees contrasted sharply against the darker green of the needle pines, and a carpet of red and green summer grasses stretched as far as the eye could see. All of which would be gone soon enough, buried for another nine months under layers of snow. How either survived—and even thrived in parts of Mareritten—I had no idea.
Kaiden reset guidance, and we were soon following a road that ran parallel to the mountains. I glanced across to the screen and groaned. “Four and a half days to get there? Seriously?”
“That's if we maintain full speed. I'm not entirely sure what the road conditions are like—there could be areas where we'll have to slow.”
“Great.” I scrubbed a hand across my eyes. “This is going to get boring.”
“Under different circumstances, I might have made several satisfying suggestions to pass the time, but given we're in enemy territory, I don't think that's wise.”
“Only several?” I raised my eyebrows. “I'm disappointed, warrior.”
His grin flashed. “Then perhaps you can take the lead once we're safely back at Esan.”
“Once we're safely back at Esan, won't we be planning an assault into the White Zone?”
“Yes, but any such assault will have a better chance of success if we can find a means of disrupting the signal between the Mareritt and the control bands on the drakkon.”