Shadows of Empyriad (The Empyriad Series Book 1)

by Josi Russell

  29

  Walt had been avoiding Karson: checking in just a little early and waiting until the director was in a meeting before dropping off his reports. Walt had successfully avoided him for three weeks, so when Karson called his name, Walt jumped.

  "Walt! Hold on!" Karson was striding out of the office.

  Walt braced himself for a fight, but Karson didn’t look angry. He looked harried. "Any sign of Caldwell when you were out near Fishing Bridge this morning?"

  Walt shook his head. "No, but someone’s been into the old boathouse.”

  “Have you seen him at his apartment?”

  “No. I haven’t seen him since he left the meeting the day of the explosion.” Walt tried to keep from saying ‘I told you so.’ Instead, he said, “It seems that he's completely disappeared."

  Karson let out a long breath, running his eyes across the thick trees around headquarters. "Not so hard to do out here."

  Looking at the younger man, Walt felt the weight of Karson's responsibilities for the first time. In his short time as director, Karson had been forced to deal with the rising discontent of neighboring communities, the Stracahn situation, the destruction of the South gate, and now, a rogue Ranger. Walt felt for him.

  "I'm going to have to head up a serious search for him," Karson said. "I'm not going to have time to do everything I've been doing. I wanted to talk to you because I need someone who can take over coordinating with the Stracahn." Karson said. "Someone who can work to find them housing in the Rockies next year and transportation there, someone who can file all the paperwork that it's going to take."

  He looked up at Walt. "You're good with people, Walt. The best we have. Could I pull you off regular duty and give you this as a special assignment? It will probably be a commitment for at least a couple of years."

  A cool breeze blew across Walt's face. He saw, just for a moment, how this opportunity could solve myriad problems for them, and it was as if a keystone was sliding into place.

  "Could Sylvia do it?" he blurted. "She'd be great at all the coordinating, and she's good with the Stracahn. I've seen it."

  Karson looked at him carefully. In his eyes was a tacit knowledge. Without a word, the director had revealed that he knew about Sylvia's condition. Walt knew that Karson had only one option—to send Sylvia out of the park—and he braced himself for that.

  But the younger man turned and gazed out into the trees again. "I think that would work," he said nonchalantly. "Her paperwork is always spotless. But she'll need to do most of it from home because the offices are crowded already."

  Walt couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He didn't hide his gratitude. He took Karson’s hand and shook it enthusiastically. "That will be perfect," he said.

  "And that will ensure that she can keep an adequate eye on the child, too," Karson said, turning back to Walt with a pointed look.

  "You heard about that, huh?" Walt said. Karson's expression, accepting and friendly, told him that he didn't need to worry.

  "I’ve heard about that from nearly every Ranger in your housing complex.” He said. “But I wouldn’t worry. It makes sense for our Stracahn coordinator to know the aliens well." He straightened his helmet. "Do you think the girl could teach Sylvia some Stracahn? Tutor her? That would give us a legitimate excuse to support you taking her in."

  Walt spoke eagerly. "Absolutely. I'm sure they can learn a lot from each other."

  As Karson walked away, Walt called, "Thank you!" but the director didn't look back, just threw him a casual wave.

  Just when Walt thought he knew people, one of them always surprised him.

  Days later, as he ate breakfast, Walt perused his screen. Protesters had concentrated at Sunset, claiming the bombing was a conspiracy to distract people from Stracahn being smuggled out of the park.

  And the tensions between the regions surrounding the park were growing, as well. Reports said that the people in Liberty, to the south of the park, were afraid of an invasion by the Cascadians, who lived to the West, and the Harvesters to the East. The Libertyites were also upset because Sol would be tried in Cascadia, by a frontier tribunal who had the power of execution. The Milguard, Liberty’s militia, was arming and training for conflict.

  Walt watched a video recording of the local leadership overseer, Agent-In-Charge Damen. “Tensions among the regions are at a fever pitch,” the man said. “the Consolidated Terrene Leadership remains very concerned about these conflicts.”

  The reporter interviewing him spoke up, “Mr. Damen, what do you see as the main force driving these conflicts?”

  Damen scoffed. “Well, ignorance, of course. The locals have no vision of the United World. They are stuck in an antiquated paradigm where they believe this land is theirs.”

  “Is the land owned by the citizens of Liberty?”

  “For the time being, yes.”

  Walt also saw a spot on the news about Sol. They were transferring him to the federal prison, deeper in Cascadia, to await sentencing. Walt saw the kid on camera for a second. Sol’s brown eyes were narrowed, his head hanging. Walt tried to push the thought of him away, tried to focus on his oatmeal and the day ahead, but the injustice of it grated on him. Even with the heaps of evidence, Walt couldn't make himself believe that Sol, who had helped Zyn’dri when she was running for the Avowed, and who had searched harder than anyone when she was lost, would have attacked like that.

  He knew someone who would have. No one had seen Caldwell since the explosion, and everyone else seemed to believe that he was simply out in the backcountry, sulking over his run-in with Karson at the meeting.

  But Walt knew people. He knew their brilliance and their darkness. He knew before most others when something was off. Sol wasn't hiding anything, but Caldwell was.

  He rose and gathered his things.

  Walt moved more quietly as he went to the front door and pulled his helmet from the peg on the wall. He slipped silently out of the apartment, hoping the Sylvia and Zyn’dri could sleep for a while. For a moment, he stood on the landing and stared at the door to Caldwell's apartment. Behind it, he knew, there were four rooms and a broad window that framed a stunning view of the meadow. But what else was in there?

  Walt shook the thought from his head and made his way downstairs. He was taking a shift at the village today. Before Zyn’dri had come to live with them, he hadn’t liked village duty. It was uncomfortable to be immersed in a culture so foreign, where any word that he heard was a strange one, and where the people eyed him with a reserved distrust. Many of the Rangers avoided it, requesting duties like kill counting that they would have shunned a year ago before the Stracahn came.

  But since Zyn'dri had come to live with them Walt found himself drawn to the village and fascinated by its strangeness. The Avowed recognized Walt now, and they were friendly, for Stracahn. Often they would come and ask him how Zin'dri was doing. He enjoyed their conversations and found himself looking for them, hoping they would approach.

  He wanted to understand her better. He wanted to know what her people believed and how they thought.

  But today as he approached, he wondered how much of what she had known before still existed, even with her people. The villages were quiet places, sad ones. So many of the Stracahn had been lost, both back on their home planet and when they arrived here. The village was still, Walt supposed, grieving.

  But the Stracahn revealed little. They sat quietly outside their huts or walked to the wellhouse to get water, their faces stone, and their emotions veiled. Walt couldn't imagine being torn so forcefully from your society. It must have been terribly hard for them. He wondered why they didn't express it.

  He looked at the children. Their steps were as measured and careful as those of their elders. They, too, sat motionless in the sunshine.

  It struck Walt that Zin'dri was different. When he looked at her, he saw pain in her eyes; he saw sorrow. When she curled between him and Sylvia as they read to her last night, he saw contentment and hope.
She smiled back at them when they smiled at her.

  He was thinking about that when he heard a calm voice behind him.

  "Thank you for your assistance the other day."

  Walt turned to see Grandyn, standing abysmally alone in the beaten-earth oval that was the center of the village.

  "You're welcome. I'm sorry about your," Walt realized he didn't know the proper word, "your colleague."

  "My Ally." Grandyn helped him. "That is the closest word in your language."

  "Your Ally. I'm sorry."

  Grandyn raised his eyes slowly, meeting Walt's gaze. "Thank you. I sense you are familiar with such loss."

  The words hit Walt in the chest. He took a deep breath. Not trusting himself to speak, he only nodded.

  "These pains pass with time," Grandyn said, and the words sounded hollow to Walt. Walt felt the old anger rise in him, the way he always responded to trite euphemisms.

  "Not always." He said coldly. He knew. Sometimes you had to live with these pains for a long, long time.

  30

  A month in, and Sol had been transferred. The Fruitland jail was no small time facility. The men here were rough. They were mostly career criminals and violent offenders waiting for trial.

  At least most of the murderers didn’t stick around long. Since the Consolidated Terrene Leadership took over, local judges had the power and responsibility to administer immediate capital punishment via injection upon conviction. Sol tried not to let that worry him. After all, he was only charged with an attack on the Leadership and destruction of Leadership Property.

  He’d been shackled in the back of a cramped crawler for several hours during transport here, and the cramp in his shoulder that had bothered him since the explosion just wouldn’t go away now. He figured that the unyielding cot he was lying on wasn't helping it, either. He sat up.

  The jail was quiet, except for the distant snoring of an inmate further down the row somewhere, a steady moaning from another inmate, and the occasional rustle of someone turning over in his sleep.

  Sol had moved past disbelief. He had moved past indignation and anger. Now, as he scooted back and leaned against the cold wall, a dark acceptance seeped into his consciousness. This was real. This was his life: the shadowy eight foot by ten foot room, with its cement floor, sink, and toilet. It was not what he wanted.

  He remembered the feel of his father's arms around him. He had always wanted to be like his father.

  Timothy wouldn't be proud to see him in this place. Would he believe Sol? Would he believe that he was innocent? If he still existed somewhere, as Sol's mother thought he did, his father may be the only one who really knew what happened.

  A month this nightmare had gone on, and nobody, not the Rangers or the police or the guards, believed that he had not caused that explosion. Even his friends seemed to be doubtful. Only Mezina had come to visit him in Sunset, and now, deep in the heart of Cascadia, he didn’t expect any visitors.

  31

  Zyn’dri loved living in the Ranger housing. Though it looked very different from her hut back on Empyriad, it felt more like it than the Quickform had. Because the apartment was on the second floor, and because the broad window in the living room looked out over the meadow and the trees, it sometimes felt as if she were back on Empyriad, climbing into the treetops.

  The trees outside were changing colors. They had become a celebration of oranges, reds, and yellows. Sylvia taught her a new word: Autumn. Back home, they had no change of seasons. Her village was temperate year round. She played with the new word as she looked out over the now-bright forest. Autumn. Autumn.

  And she was beginning to hear some Stracahn words around her new home, too, as she helped Sylvia learn the language, and Walt, too, when he was home.

  But their lessons would be less frequent now that they were going to work part of each day in the Village. Zyn’dri would spend that time in school, and Sylvia would spend it meeting with the Avowed and other adults, seeing how she could help them learn to live in this world.

  This was their first day and Zyn’dri’s second ride in a spider. Walt was driving them to the village on his way to park headquarters over by Old Faithful.

  As they rode in the spider, Zyn’dri looked in the mirror. She couldn’t keep her eyes off the striking pattern Sylvia had made in her turquoise hair. It hung over her shoulder like a rope. “What is this?” she asked.

  “It’s called a braid,” Sylvia said, smiling.

  Zyn’dri touched the woven strands. They echoed yet another of the patterns from Laska’s books. She smiled, too, and tossed her head around. She loved the heavy weight of it on her back, and she loved that her hair wasn’t in her eyes. It was remarkable. She thought for a moment how beautiful Asvika’s violet hair would look like this. Perhaps she could convince Sylvia to do it while they were in the village today.

  A weight pulled at her mind when she thought of the village. Sylvia must have seen the shadow cross her face.

  “What is it, sweetie?”

  “I hope the—” Zyn’dri stopped. She didn’t want to say it. Sylvia leaned down to gaze into her eyes, and her presence gave Zyn’dri strength. “I hope the Trisne Rooth isn’t there anymore.”

  Sylvia’s face folded into an expression of sympathy. “I know. Me too.”

  So Sylvia didn’t like death, either, though Zyn’dri felt its cold presence hovering beside them in the apartment every day. She gazed into Sylvia’s eyes and tried to see it, tried to pick out where in her that chill came from.

  Sylvia didn’t pull away. She returned Zyn’dri’s look and waited patiently.

  “Are you sick?” Zyn’dri asked pointedly.

  Sylvia nodded. “Yes.”

  “Will you die?” Zyn’dri knew the answer before Sylvia spoke it.

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  Sylvia’s face was sad. “I don’t know, sweetie. It won’t be long.”

  Zyn’dri liked that Sylvia spoke plainly. Some of the humans seemed to sidestep the facts, but Sylvia trusted her with the truth.

  Zyn’dri nodded. She reached up and touched Sylvia’s cheek, but pulled her hand back, surprised, as a tiny current passed between them. Sylvia looked surprised, too.

  “Awful quiet back there all of a sudden,” Walt said, breaking the silence. He didn’t like talking about Sylvia’s illness. From where he sat in the driver’s seat, he couldn’t look directly at them. Zyn’dri wondered if she should try to describe to him what had just happened. Only she didn’t know what had just happened.

  “Look!” Walt pointed out the window at the shining ribbon of the river as the spider stepped over it. A flock of the white birds Zyn’dri had seen before rose from the water in a chaos of wings and webbed feet.

  “What are their names?” Zyn’dri cried, delighted.

  “They’re pelicans,” Walt said. “They use those big bills to scoop up fish.”

  “I know. I’ve seen them.” Somehow, seeing them again, and knowing what they were and how they moved and ate, made Zyn’dri feel more at home here. Perhaps, as she learned more about this place, she would come to know it as well as she had known Empyriad.

  When they arrived, the village children were all going toward the dining hut. Zyn’dri looked for the Trisne Rooth, but it was gone from its place. She realized, suddenly, that they were not here.

  Somehow, she had still been imagining that her parents were here somewhere. Zyn’dri felt empty and afraid. She saw Pyrsha walking with her parents. They were surrounded by Chantha children who drifted along, looking at best timid and at worst, terrified.

  “Pyrsha!” Zyn’dri waved. She saw Pyrsha’s bright violet eyes turn toward her, then quickly drop to the ground. Her mother shot a pointed look at Zyn’dri and, putting an arm around Pyrsha, turned her away.

  Zyn’dri stopped walking for a moment and stood, stunned. She saw Innueo and called to him, too, as she ran to him. She threw her arms around him, but he stood stiffly. She pulled back and lo
oked at him.

  “Zyn’dri, don’t.” He muttered.

  She felt confusion bubbling in her mind. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  Innueo glanced around. “Nothing. I just don’t like those,” he squirmed, “human things.”

  “Hugs?” Zyn’dri said. Hugs weren’t simply human, though she did realize that they were only rarely shared by the Stracahn.

  “And that,” he pointed to her face, “thing you do with your mouth.”

  Zyn’dri smiled tentatively. “This?”

  Innueo turned and hurried toward the school, leaving her on the path.

  Sylvia approached. “Is everything okay, Zyn’dri?”

  Zyn’dri didn’t know. She looked up at Sylvia.

  “Things are a little different,” Sylvia said, “for you and them. Be brave, and give them time. Just keep being yourself.”

  Zyn’dri had no idea what that meant. Who else could she be? And how? But she sensed that Sylvia was trying to help, so she smiled and went toward the school.

  The dining hut smelled like the many meals that had been cooked in it. Zyn’dri found her way to one of the tables. It felt strange to be back here, after everything that had happened. Sylvia was right. Everything was different now. Even she wasn’t the same. She felt alone here.

  As Pavela, the teacher, stood in the center of the tables and tossed questions at the children, Zyn’dri realized that she had missed so much. She tried to understand what they were talking about.

  “In what season was the first Empyriad flood?” The teacher pointed to Zyn’dri.

  Zyn’dri felt the gaze of her classmates. She had no answer. “I don’t know,” she said, “but, may I ask a question?”

  The teacher nodded. “You may.”

  “Where is the Trisne Rooth?” Zyn’dri asked.

  Pavela looked disapproving. Of course, the death tent was not for polite conversation. But Zyn’dri had to know.

  “Please? My parents were there the last time I saw them.”