Burn

by Keri Arthur

  “How?”

  “She was in the wrong place at the wrong time during a Mareritt attack on the walls.” He grimaced. “My father continually ordered her to the bunkers, and she continually ignored him. She was weapon-trained and refused to flee or let others fight in her stead.”

  “Did she have the mote in her eye?”

  “Yes. And she was one of the few who believed drakkons would one day return to Esan.” His expression held a touch of wistfulness. “I wish she could have been here to meet you, Oma, and Kiva.”

  I reached out a hand. His fingers twined through mine, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The grief we both shared—mine new and raw, his older but no less painful—swirled between us. This had to be Dhrukita. Had to be. I might not have believed in it, but it was the only explanation for the strengthening bond. Kin might share thoughts and emotions with their drakkon, but that ability had never crossed over to allow such communication kin to kin.

  “Is he still demanding I undergo another reading?”

  “That was done while you were unconscious.” He paused. “Against my wishes, let me tell you.”

  And with good reason—reading the mind of the unconscious was dangerous to both parties. Not only did the reader risk being swept up in the pain or darkness holding court in the mind of the unconscious soul and utterly losing his or her way out, but in the process of trying to withdraw, could destroy that person’s mind.

  “Did the reader discover anything new or different to Lindale?”

  “Not much. The ice in your mind has receded, allowing more of your memories to be read, but nuggets of magic remain.”

  “So your father believes us now?”

  A smile twisted his lips. “Even if he didn’t, I think the sheer number of Mareritt who have been combing Arleeon for you would have convinced him you hold some value.”

  I grunted. “What about the drakkon bands? Any success on them?”

  “Yes and no.” He grimaced. “The good news is that they’ve pulled one apart and found the receiver. The bad news is, they haven’t yet found a means of blocking the signal over a broad area, which is what we actually need if we’re to have any hope of freeing the majority of the drakkons.”

  “Do they think it’s possible?”

  He hesitated. “They’re actually thinking it might be a better idea to boost the signal to the point where it blows the receiver apart.”

  “Doing that will cause the drakkon a lot of pain.”

  “Not if the communications channel is used rather than the pain one.”

  “There’s two separate channels?”

  “Three, although we’re not sure what the third channel is for.”

  That kill, came Oma’s comment.

  What?

  It kills, she repeated. Fries mind.

  Are bastards, Kiva said.

  I swore and scrubbed a hand across my face. “Oma says that third channel is used to kill them.”

  “Which means we’d better make damn sure that when we fry the receiver, it takes out all the channels.”

  “The other option is to destroy the relays they’re using to send the signals.”

  He frowned. “That wouldn’t be a long-term option though—they’d rebuild.”

  “We don’t need long term. By destroying the signal relays, we’re destroying the means by which the Mareritt control the drakkons. It gives us the chance—via Oma and Kiva—to order them away from the Mareritt so we can remove the bands from those who’ll let us near. It also means your people have more time to work on a means of either blocking or destroying the receivers on the bands of any drakkons not currently in Arleeon.”

  I like this plan, came Oma’s comment. Should do.

  A smile touched my lips. Emri had always listened in on conversations too, especially during preflight councils.

  Kaiden grunted. “It could also help throw them off the scent of what else we’re trying to do.”

  Which was find the mages or whoever else was responsible for that ice weapon and destroy them. “Do we know where the relay towers are? Is it possible to even get to them?”

  “There are three. Two we can certainly access even though they’re heavily guarded by soldiers and anti-armament tanks. But the third is in the White Zone—and it’s the largest.”

  “Is the force around the towers the reason they’ve never been attacked before?”

  “Our attacks are the reason they’re now heavily guarded.” A smile twisted his lips. “Of course, we weren’t aware that the towers also controlled the drakkons via the leg bands or we would have continued the attacks.”

  “Given there’s no kin currently capable of talking to the drakkons, it probably wouldn’t have made any difference.” I frowned. “What actually happened when the towers did go down?”

  “There was no discernable difference in how the drakkons reacted,” he said. “But we were never able to hit the tower in the White Zone.”

  “Which means it’s probably the main one.”

  “Sounds like it, but a coordinated assault on all three would be the best option. Otherwise, they’ll just ramp up security around the one in the White Zone.” He glanced around as the door swished open and a medic in a white uniform stepped into the room. “The patient’s finally awake, Zina.”

  The blonde’s expression was wry. “So I can see. You want to step outside while I do a release scan?”

  Kaiden squeezed my fingers, then rose and left. Zina moved to the machine and punched a few buttons. The arm above me came online and slowly slid from the top of my head to my toes. Numbers came up on the screen; she grunted, pressed a few more buttons, and then removed the needles from my arms.

  “You’re good to go,” she said. “Just take it easy on that shoulder for a few days—the muscles are healed, but they’ll be a little tender. Your uniform has been cleaned and is hanging in the locker, and there’s a shower in the privy room if you wish to use it.”

  “Thanks.”

  She nodded, her attention on the machine more than me. I climbed somewhat warily out of the bed, but other than a slight twinge in my arm, everything worked. I grabbed my knife and clothes—which included new underclothing, I was pleased to see—and then headed into the privy.

  When I came back out, the medic was gone and Kaiden was waiting. “My father’s been informed you’re awake. He wants to see us immediately.”

  I nodded and fell in step beside him. “Did you tell him what Kiva said?”

  “Yes. I also described the attack on the coruscation and the weapon used. He agrees with the urgent need to uncover what they’re developing in the White Zone. If Zephrine did have an escape route none of us knew about—”

  “Then it’s our best chance of getting in there without getting captured.” Our footsteps echoed through silent corridors of metal. I had no doubt there were people—even guards—within the hospital complex, but there was no visible evidence of them. Maybe I’d been kept in an isolation ward. Perhaps the combination of my Mareritt coloring and the fact that Kiva had incinerated one of their soldiers—

  Have no regrets, Kiva cut in. They hurt you. I burn them. Simple.

  But it would still be better if you didn’t make a habit of burning our allies. Keep it for the Mareritt.

  She harrumphed at me.

  “Where in Zephrine was the escape tunnel’s entrance?” Kaiden said.

  “In the aerie—”

  “Which is now Mareritt controlled and protected by drakkons.”

  “Yes, and that means we’ll need some way of smashing the receivers in the control bands on the drakkons guarding the aerie before we can attempt anything else.”

  He scrubbed a hand across his jaw, his expression one of frustration. “They’re hoping to have developed a short-term, short-range means of doing that within the next forty-eight hours, but I’ll give them a hurry along.”

  He must have sought an update when he’d been sent out of the room by Zina.

 
; The doors up ahead swished open, revealing a wider corridor and multiple doors. The area behind me might have been lacking in movement and personnel, but that wasn’t the case here. Few appeared to pay us any attention, but I was nevertheless aware of the gazes that stabbed into my back and the whispers that haunted our steps. It was to be expected, given I looked Mareritt rather than kin, but it nevertheless worried me.

  We walked through a mind-numbing number of corridors but eventually entered another stark, steel-clad area with a door at the far end. The two men standing on either side came to attention at our approach.

  “The commander is expecting us,” Kaiden said, voice clipped.

  One guard nodded and pressed his hand against the nearby scanner to open the door. Kaiden’s gaze briefly met mine, and I nodded once, even though it felt as if a major storm brewed in my stomach. I might not have ever wanted to lead a grace or an attack, but I was the last true kin. There was no one else to do this. Certainly there was no one left with the knowledge I had of both the drakkons and Zephrine of old.

  The room was long and wide, with windows that ran the full length of the two longer sides. One looked over Esan’s great wall, and from this height, her soldiers looked minute. Beyond it, Mareritten lay stretched out like a map; the commander would have been able to see our flight through the bog long before we’d gotten anywhere near the pass.

  And had done nothing to help us.

  Anger rose, even though it was pointless. He had his reasons and a city to protect. I could understand that even if I didn’t agree with it.

  The other window looked over the old Esan fortress, newer extensions, and then out into Arleeon. Another great wall was evident in the distance, though from here it looked as tiny as the men on the wall to our left. It was undoubtedly the wall that separated Greater Esan from the rest of Arleeon.

  The room itself mirrored Zephrine’s war room. A long table dominated the center of the room, and a series of screens and communications points ran the length of both windows. They were dark at the moment, but I knew, come an attack, this room would be filled with people and those screens active.

  Aside from Kaiden’s father, there was another man and a woman in the room. The latter wore the colors of Esan’s kin, which was the reverse of ours—red with gold stitching. She also had a mote in the white of her eye, which strengthened the likelihood she was kin even if, as Kaiden had said, none so marked knew how to use their inner fires. The man held an air of authority—an impression enforced by his short white hair and the ragged scar running down his right cheek—but his uniform, like the commander’s, was black leather with silver stitching. In my time, it had been the dress uniform of Esan’s ground forces rather than one used every day. Maybe it was now used within Esan walls to differentiate those who were kin and those who were “regular” ground forces. I had no doubt both used civvies when beyond her walls—as evidenced by what Kaiden had been wearing in the prison pod.

  He stopped and stood with his hands behind his back. “Reporting as ordered, Commander.”

  The commander nodded and motioned us to both sit. Once we had, he said in a clipped and cold voice, “Kaiden tells me it’s possible one of Zephrine’s old emergency tunnels survived the fortress’s destruction—and that it isn’t Kriton, as we’d always presumed.”

  “No,” I said. “The Balkain Mountains are the surviving remnant of a larger volcanic range that once dominated the area, and we put many of the old lava tubes to good use.”

  “There’s no mention of tubes being used as escapes routes in the records we’ve gone through,” the second man said.

  “I’m also told there’s no record of the attack on the coruscations being a joint decision, but it certainly was.”

  “Given your sister led that attack,” the woman said, “you’re unlikely to have claimed anything else.”

  “I was there.” I kept my voice mild, even as anger fired inside. “You were not. I have no reason to lie when two centuries have passed and no one can alter what happened.”

  “And yet if such a decision had been made, we surely would have—”

  “Enough, Lila.” The commander shot her warning look. “As she said, we can no more change what happened than we can bring back the graces. Let’s concentrate on what we can do. Where does this tunnel of yours exit, Nara?”

  “Near Old Carlula.”

  “Which isn’t a town I’m familiar with.” The commander glanced at the second man. “Kemp, do we have any of the old maps on the system?”

  “I’ll check.” The shorter man rose and moved across to one of the screens. After a few minutes, a map flashed up on the nearby wall. “This is the oldest we have—it comes from just over a hundred years ago, but I believe the cartographers of the time used the older maps as a basis and simply added to them as required.”

  I studied the map with a frown. It bore the names of towns and areas I simply didn’t know, and yet the underlying topography was familiar—and had obviously been created by someone whose viewpoint had come from drakkon back. After several seconds, I spotted a familiar crack in the landscape. I rose, moved around to the map, and pointed to an area on the outskirts of what was now a town called Hardwick.

  “In my time, Old Carlula—a city destroyed by a long-ago eruption—lay here. Depending on how accurate this map still is, the main exit point lies a mile or so north of this town.”

  “Which puts it right on the edge of the White Zone,” the commander said. “It’s highly unlikely they wouldn’t have found and dealt with such a tunnel if such still existed.”

  “Does Hardwick itself still exist?” I asked.

  “It exists, but no one lives there now,” Kaiden said. “The farmlands to the east of it remain in use, but these days they simply ship workers in and out every day.”

  Which made sense if they wanted to keep people away from the White Zone but needed production to continue. The area around Old Carlula might have been pocked with the remnants of volcanic destruction, but the soil itself had become rich and moist thanks to the area’s high rainfall. It had been mostly forest in my day, but even then there’d been farms springing up around its eastern edges.

  “Have the Mareritt completely stripped the area of the forest, or does some of it remain?” I asked.

  Kaiden rose and joined me. “This area here”—he pointed to a long strip of land between Hardwick and the port town of Redding—“remains.”

  “Which means if we can get to Redding, we have cover.”

  “Except the Mareritt have grounded all fishing fleets in all ports,” Lila said. “There are standing orders to destroy any vessel attempting to enter or exit said ports.”

  “Which still leaves us a lot of coastline.”

  “It might be possible to slip a small enough boat in here.” Kaiden pointed to an area beyond Redding. There were no towns marked on the map, and the coastline rose sharply into the mountainous terrain beyond. “It wouldn’t be an easy region to traverse, which means there’s less likelihood of it being patrolled.”

  “They don’t need patrols when they have the drakkons,” Lila commented. “Your two won’t be of much use if they’re sighted by those still under Mareritt control and then come under heavy attack from whatever ground forces they do have nearby.”

  “Which is where the device to break the connection between the Mareritt and their drakkons comes into play,” I said.

  “If such can be devised.” Lila’s voice was edged. “Even then, there’s no guarantee it’ll succeed.”

  I rather suspected Lila didn’t like my presence here—not because my being kin of old jeopardized her position in Esan, but because it highlighted her own inadequacies. Something she shouldn’t have been feeling given the situation, and yet one I might have shared had our positions been reversed.

  “Then our drakkons will force any others down,” I replied evenly, “and we’ll free them manually.”

  “Even if we can get you into that area,” the commander sai
d, with another warning look at Lila, “the Mareritt have poured vast numbers into all Arleeon in their search for the two of you. Getting anywhere is not easy at the moment.”

  “This isn’t the first time their military forces have flooded Arleeon,” Kaiden said. “We move at night, as we did each of those times.”

  The commander grunted. “And what happens if the exit isn’t viable?”

  “The Mareritt would have no reason to believe that an old lava tube would give anyone access into the aeries,” I said. “Even if they have collapsed the main entrance, there are others. Those who planned and built Zephrine might never have imagined the city would fall, but they certainly catered for the possibility.”

  The commander’s expression remained skeptical. “Getting into the aeries is only part of the problem—”

  “Zephrine was my home,” I cut in softly. “If any of her still remains—and I’m told the new city uses the foundations of the old—then rest assured I can get through her without being seen.”

  His gaze narrowed. Judging me, judging my words. I had no idea what he was thinking beyond his evident skepticism, and no immediate chance to find out.

  A siren rang out. Two short blasts and then one long one—a signal I recognized from my time in Zephrine.

  Esan was under attack.

  Ten

  The commander rose and strode over to one of the consoles. He tapped the screen a number of times, and the ones to our right came alive. Information and images scrolled across them so fast that from where I was standing it was impossible to read.

  The commander obviously had no such problem. “Tower seven is being hit. Unknown number of Mareritt.” He glanced at the other man. “Kemp, inform the earth witches to fall out in case of a breakthrough. Lila, get to your station. Kaiden, tower eight. Immediately.”

  Kaiden glanced at me—a silent order to follow—and then raced out the door after Lila. We bolted through a myriad of corridors, down a series of long stairs, and eventually came out into a courtyard that was long, wide, and filled with trains, pods, and people. It was organized chaos and so familiar, my heart raced. I knew this, loved this. Except this time, there would be no drakkon sweeping in for kin to mount. No graces to fly wingtip to wingtip, their bellows echoing through the darkness as they swept up into starlit skies in perfect formation. No bellies rumbling in fiery readiness as wings swung toward the enemy.