“If I were afraid of revealing my weaknesses to you, would I’ve come in here like this?”
I threw my visual reparation band at her face. It hit her cheek, leaving a bloody scar—a scar she could’ve healed instantly with hair magic, if we weren’t in a diffusion cell. I leaned over the table so our faces were an inch apart.
“This war isn’t about you or me,” I said, voice barely above a whisper. “And, if you can’t see that, you don’t belong in my fleet, after all.”
“Sir, I promise I belong in your fleet more than anywhere else on Second Earth,” she responded after a long, heavy pause. “And, I can be a great source of inside information for the Nurro-Ichthyothian Alliance… if you don’t stop me, Lechatelierite.”
“That’s Commander Lechatelierite to you, soldier.”
Scarlet July
For the rest of the day and well into the night, I stayed bound to the cold, metal chair, harassed by several, obnoxious interrogators from the Ichthyothian Intelligence Agency. After Lechatelierite, everyone else seemed lame. One particularly amusing way they attempted to intimidate me was by placing a bright light above my head. How did they expect to frighten a Conflagrian like that? Ichthyothians were the ones who couldn’t stand a little heat and light. Their idea of a scalding day would be forty-five degrees and only partly cloudy.
None of their silly tactics could rattle me. The only thing that left me shaking in my shackles was Lechatelierite’s silver-grey stare. His eyes were like crystals. Clear. Faceted. Sharp. And, he had the jawline to match. His face was severe—when he looked at me, it took all my courage not to flinch or turn away. During the interrogation, I couldn’t even bring myself to meet his eye on my own accord; he had to force me to. Even in his crippled state, his every movement seemed to convey his power and authority. As did his voice. His voice was like a scalpel. Cutting. Compelling. Convicting. Even when he spoke his accented Nurian. His tone could capture, control. Hypnotize, almost. Like a throat mage. Like a throat mage who’d trained diligently at the System Mage Castle for ages.
And, yet, as intimidating as he was, there was something about him that made me volunteer a sliver of something I’d kept under lock and key for nearly six ages, now—the story of July twenty-fifth. I thought I’d take that story to the grave, but Lechatelierite drew it from me by doing nothing but simply being himself.
When I showed up at breakfast this morning, no one questioned me. I assumed that was on Lechatelierite’s orders. I figured there was no way he’d let it spill I was a ‘trustworthy mage’—that’d be far too large a pill for anyone here to swallow. I figured he told them his accusation was incorrect and I was Nurian, after all. With his reputation, it’d take a lot to admit to being wrong about anything. But, he took the bullet for my sake. He lied to prevent my comrades from rejecting me. The Nurian Academy instilled such a strong hatred of all things magical in the minds of its students, Lechatelierite didn’t want to risk the coherence of his fleet by revealing the truth. The Nurians surely weren’t capable of recognizing a mage on their own, so it made sense they’d accept I was Nurian simply because Lechatelierite said so. Whatever he said, went. That was the way things worked around here.
Though, I could already tell Lechatelierite wasn’t an oppressive leader. He had control, but he wasn’t like the System. The System made the magical masses believe they couldn’t survive without herding. The System governed by instilling fear and a sense of one’s own weakness and helplessness. Lechatelierite’s command, on the other hand, was one born of trust and respect. He made you believe you were needed. That you were capable. That you couldn’t dare but give anything less than one-hundred-percent because that’s simply what it took to achieve collective success. He made you want to be excellent. He made you hunger for his approval. I never wanted to let him down.
I could also tell that, while Lechatelierite strove to put out an impression of perfect confidence and self-control, deep down, he actually struggled with both. I caught a glimpse behind the mask of the ‘perfect commander’ during my interrogation; when I accused him of distrusting me because I’d seen him in his all his crippled splendor, he threw his visual band at me with more force than an arm mage could toss a taro. It was like he couldn’t stand the possibility of anyone, even his potential enemy, thinking anything but the best about him. He cared too much for image and reputation. This wasn’t necessarily his fault—after losing that battle last age, he probably toiled daily under the pressure of having to redeem his name. He had big boots to fill. His own.
* * *
The manta ray finished its trek across the Briny Ocean and the Septentrion Sea by mid-day on the twenty-sixth of May. At sixteen o’clock, the vitreous silica rose to the surface of the frigid water and emitted the seventy new divers of Commander Cease Lechatelierite’s fleet onto the southern shore of Aventurine City, Ichthyosis.
I emerged from the ship and stood on the icy land where no Conflagrian could possibly belong. Although I learned all about Ichthyosis at the academy, nothing could’ve really prepared me for the sight I beheld now. The white sky seemed to melt into the unblemished, white land, making the horizon difficult to discern, even to my eyes. I found Ichthyosis’s blaring monochrome disorienting. Even the buildings around here were either white or a pale silver that reminded me of the Commander’s eyes.
Wind howled in our ears and blew snow into our faces. After mere minutes of standing outside, we were soaked. We weren’t wearing diving suits, just our regular uniforms, so it took a lot of discipline—and spectrum—not to shiver openly. I could hardly stand the way the cold fabric clung to my skin. I was wearing both my mage robes overtop my uniform, cloaked by eye-magic. Just as I did at the academy, I was planning on storing them in the back of my locker on base, winding a strand of my impenetrable, magical hair around the handlebar.
Lechatelierite exited the ship after us, satisfaction in his eyes. “Nice day,” he commented. I stared. “Light snowfall was originally predicted for this afternoon—only about two or three feet—but, lucky for all of you, the latest reports now state it’s just going to keep flurrying like this, instead.”
Light snowfall of only about two or three feet? I peered at the buildings nearby and realized what initially looked to me like the top story was really snow accumulation. Most of my comrades originated from Nuria’s northern regions; they looked slightly less disconcerted by their surroundings than the handful of us from the central and southern regions—Nurtic Leavesleft, Arrhyth Link, Dither Maine, Apha Edenta and I. (It made sense that northern Nurians were more likely to become divers, considering the frigid underwater obstacle course we were given last September. I imagine that test weeded out a lot of candidates, particularly southerners). Lechatelierite was the only one who looked completely at ease. He was on the ice, in his element.
The Nurians and I watched in silent awe as a band of white suits emerged from the invisible horizon in perfect unison, motions as fluid as mercury.
Lechatelierite addressed them in Ichthyothian: “Veterans, these are your new comrades-in-arms, from Nuria.” He turned to us, gestured to his fantastic fleet, and spoke in his accented Nurian, “Nurians, meet the veterans.”
The Ichthyothians stood before us with their shoulders and backs straight. They wore the same uniforms as us, but cobalt blue or silver bands, which I assumed represented rank, streaked a few of their arms. Lechatelierite himself had three blue bands on each arm.
Standing in front of these men, I felt rather second-rate, clumsy and weak. The Nurians beside me undoubtedly shared my thoughts. We thought we were so strong and powerful. We were proud to be Lechatelierite’s chosen. What a joke. These divers before us were his real fleet. We were just an afterthought. Especially me. How could a sub-five-foot, eighty-pound, Conflagrian mage ever expect to become one of these ice-faring, fluid-moving, steel-boned soldiers?
“For the next three months, all of you will train together,” Lechatelierite said, voice all the more convicting a
nd captivating in his native tongue. “There’ll be less time in the pools or with anchored articles, Nurians. I want you to learn to navigate the sea, making optimal use of the natural terrain. Let the veterans be your examples. I won’t join you in the water until July. Until then, I’ll watch and provide instruction from a vitreous silica. I’m doing this because it’s important for each of you learn to think for yourself and, should the need arise, take charge. We’re only as strong as our weakest link, and the weakest link in my fleet is expected to know how to lead beautifully under pressure. Let this be a challenge to all of you.”
Oh Tincture, was he lying. Sure, it was a good idea to rotate command during training so the fleet wouldn’t go under if Lechatelierite got killed or captured during a real battle. But, I knew the realreason for his absence and it had nothing to do with preparing us for the worst.
“You must learn to trust each other and function seamlessly, like a single organism with many limbs,” he continued. “From this moment on, there’s no such thing as Nurians or Ichthyothians. We’re united by a single cause: to eliminate the Conflagrian threat to the northwestern hemisphere.” He stood in the center, crystal eyes sweeping over us. “All one-hundred-ten of you, we’re the one, the Nurro-Ichthyothian Diving Fleet.”
At that moment, I realized what it meant for there to only be forty Ichthyothians here. There were supposed to be seventy. I felt as though I’d swallowed a large chunk of ice. Lechatelierite’s lost battle cost him thirty divers? I stared at him in horrified amazement. He had thirty lives, fresh on his conscious. At seventeen ages old.
* * *
Lechatelierite ordered us to change into our diving suits and flippers. He had us Nurians strap on our numbered vests overtop our suits. I looked down at the large, blue ‘87’ on my chest and felt a prickle of nervous fear. I assumed the vests weren’t only for visual identification, but digital tracking as well. Who knew what sort of information Lechatelierite got from them. Ichthyothian technology never ceased to surprise me.
For today’s practice, I was placed in a temporary unit of fifteen soldiers—ten Nurians and five Ichthyothians. The one in charge of our group was a burly guy named Amok Kempt, Lechatelierite’s second-in-command. As we set off and Amok began rattling off instructions, I could immediately tell why Lechatelierite prized him. He was clever in a sort of malicious way. He came up with unusual answers to usual problems and had plenty of wild tricks up his sleeve.
He was also really obnoxious. At least three times during his dispatch orders, he managed to throw in what apparently was his tagline, ‘A soldier is never unprepared!’ followed by a handful of obscene Ichthyothian words the academy obviously never taught us.
And, when he first laid eyes on me, he laughed openly. “A little girl, just what the fleet needs! Come to use those big, bad muscles of yours to scare the fire-savages, Miss Bloodclot?”
My eyes grew hot, and not just because he called my people by that derogatory name. It was stupidest thing a leader could do—break group unity by putting down the one who could very well be the most brilliant. The Nurians knew and respected me well enough, by now. They knew what I was capable of and could mostly see past my size and gender. But, we were still making our first impressions on the veterans. How could the vets ever learn to trust me with their lives in battle if I was immediately made into a mascot? Was Lechatelierite unaware of his second’s attitude? Maybe. Lechatelierite had been out-of-commission for the majority of an age, after all.
My unit was now surface-riding on the outside of crystalline shuttle three, piloted by Amok.
“Unit one, you’re too nose-heavy,” Lechatelierite’s voice sounded in our helmets. He watched us from the vitreous silica above. “I need at least four of you to move toward the tail.”
Unsure and afraid, no one budged.
“Come on, you heard the despot,” Amok growled privately to our unit. “Move it!”
Despot. So, Amok despised Lechatelierite. I wouldn’t dare speak so disrespectfully of my commander, especially one so excellent. Especially if I were his second. What did Amok gain from doing that? All it did was create divisiveness. With a single word, he relayed to every new recruit there was an instability in the chain-of-command. A power struggle, perhaps.
As I moved from rung to rung, heading toward the tail, it was hard not to be at least a little afraid of falling off. Which, of course, made me think about last summer’s vision of the poor surface-rider whose crystalline, though underwater, got swallowed by fire. He was probably one of the thirty Lechatelierite lost. I saw through that man’s eyes and experienced his terror. I remembered exactly how it felt to twist into the tide, colliding with shuttle debris—
No, the vision didn’t continue that long. I woke up right after letting go of the rungs. But, alas, now, I couldn’t stop the series of new images from cascading through my mind. Flames scorching a white suit. A scrap of crystalline, hurtling at hundreds of miles per hour, crashing into a helmet. Unbearable water pressure. Guilt, horrible guilt, for leaving the fleet behind and for failing Ichthyosis. And, the pale, anguished face of—
Lechatelierite! The truth hit me as forcefully as the swing of a hobnail-dragon’s tail. That was how he got injured! Hyperventilating now, my hands grew prickly, which made holding on even harder than it already was.
But, how could I have a vision of Lechatelierite—or any infrared Nordic, for that matter—in the first place? We mages could only envision those we’re spectrally twined to. How could my wavelength twine to someone who didn’t even have a colored thread in the spectral web, at all? And, even if Lechatelierite did have one, why would my wavelength attach to it? I knew all about him, but it’s not like we had much of a personal relationship. Our few face-to-face encounters—when I burst into his quarters after the practical final and when he accused me at gunpoint of being a spy then interrogated me in a diffusion cell—weren’t exactly the bonding kind.
“Jump in forty-five seconds!” Amok’s voice rang in my helmet, snapping me from my thoughts. It was hard not to keep thinking about Lechatelierite. I gnawed my mouthpiece. I couldn’t afford to be distracted at a time like this.
“Five seconds after I start the barrel-roll, kick off,” Amok instructed. “Keep your body erect and your arms up, behind your head. Ten seconds after launching, either shuttle one, two, four, or five will pass in front of you. Grab hold where you can. Ready? Go!”
I strung my body out and pushed off the hull. Sure enough, in exactly ten seconds, a blur of grey—my target shuttle—swooped in and I latched onto it.
It was madness! Adrenaline coursed through my veins. Three of my comrades grabbed on at the same time as me. The fourth, however, wasn’t so lucky.
Apha Edenta held the crystalline’s tail with one hand, his heavy, panicked breathing echoing in our helmets. He was several feet from the nearest handlebar, legs flailing. My heartrate quickened. I wasn’t exactly close, but I was the closest diver here to him.
I hooked my feet on the rungs and arched my back with the curvature of the shuttle, hands high above my head. My hair extended, slithering like a snake beneath the liquid fabric of my diving suit to wrap around my arms, so I could better support a two-hundred-pound man. Apha caught my hands. I bent my elbows and knees, pulling him in, within reach of a handlebar. He grabbed it. I exhaled.
“Spin two in thirty seconds! Same drill. You know what to do,” Amok announced. I closed my eyes. It was going to be a long day.
* * *
The Ichthyothians emerged from training, unscathed. Many of them even looked bored. We Nurians, on the other hand, came back limping and out-of-breath. But, with the exception of Apha’s slip-up, I thought today went well.
Apparently, Lechatelierite had different standards.
“Well, that freak-show was entertaining,” he greeted us crossly as we entered Icicle, tracking saltwater all over the polished, white floor. “I’m not sure what you all spent the last seven months doing.”
Before w
e even got to change out of our suits, he ushered us into a lecture hall and launched into a seventy-minute critique, complete with playback footage. His analysis was shrewd and his awareness was sharp; he noticed things that even evaded my eyes and drew correlations that escaped my mind. Exhausted as I was, I listened attentively, absorbing his words like a sand dune in a rare Conflagrian rain, in awe yet again of his brilliance.
But, all the while, it was hard to watch his face and not think about that battle from last summer.
When the lesson finally ended, we trudged to the locker room. My whole body ached. I collapsed onto a bench and put my head in my hands, too tired to change.
“Hey, bloodclot!” came Amok’s voice, from behind. “The despot wants to see you, now.”
I lifted my head and looked at him, wearily.
“Hey, if you’re late, I’ll get in trouble. Move!”
I got to my unsteady feet and headed out into the hall. No one else had orders to see the Commander. Just me. My nerves jangled. I didn’t need this after the most intense day of exercise in my life. I just wanted to go to sleep.
I stood in front of Lechatelierite’s door, forced my back straight and pressed the intercom.
“Uh, Commander, sir,” I breathed in Ichthyothian. “This is July. Kempt sent for me.”
“Enter.”
My stomach knotted at the sound of his cold voice.
His door wouldn’t budge. “Sir, your door. It’s, um, locked.”
“Didn’t stop you before, did it?” he snapped. “I said, enter.”
He wanted me to magically break in? Very well, then. I guessed he was testing my obedience to his orders, however strange. I wound a lock of hair around the knob and pushed.
“Soldier, I commend your performance today,” he said in his accented Nurian.
My heart leapt as I closed the door behind me. As I turned toward him, I fought hard to keep the excitement from my face. Cease Lechatelierite was complementing me! He thought highly of my performance! But, then—
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