Eve of Destruction

by C. E. Stalbaum

  Eve tossed an annoyed glare at Zach, but it lacked conviction. Danev’s name was going to come out sooner or later, and eventually they’d have to tell Maltus why they were going to Vaschberg specifically. This seemed as good a time as any.

  “We found this in mom’s study,” she said softly, handing him the note from inside her purse. “That’s why we were heading out west. We were going to Vaschberg.”

  She expected him to dismiss it the same as Zach had. It wasn’t much, after all, just a simple message that implied her mother wanted to speak with Gregori Danev in Vaschberg. It wasn’t signed or dated or anything else, and her mother hadn’t left it in an obvious place. It could have easily been nothing, but it was all she had to go on.

  But Maltus didn’t dismiss it. Instead his eyes narrowed in thought as he read over it. “I see.”

  “So you do know him?” Zach prompted.

  The old man nodded idly. “Oh, yes. So did your mother, obviously. Gregori was one of our small college clique, I guess you could say. There were seven of us in total. We were young and energetic and thought we could change the world.”

  “Change the world?” Zach asked. “By doing what?”

  Maltus sighed and smiled wistfully as he handed Eve back the note. “That’s a bit hard to explain to someone who didn’t live in the ‘twenties. It was a different time then, before real trains, before Steamworks…and just after the Polerian War. There were all kinds of protests and riots popping up all over the country. It was a turbulent time, to say the least.” He shrugged and visibly pulled himself away from the memories. “Anyway, I know Gregori runs some type of business in Vaschberg, but I’m not sure what. Thirty years ago he was a good man and a better friend. He was also a bit enamored with your mother.”

  “So you don’t think he did it,” Zach said.

  “Definitely not,” Maltus assured him. “But I’m not certain why Tara would have wanted to contact him, of all people. They haven’t spoken in ages, as far as I’m aware.”

  “Maybe they started talking again since you left for Selerius,” Zach suggested.

  “Or maybe she had another dream,” Eve said distantly. “Another vision, I mean. She must have suspected something was about to happen and left that for me to find.”

  “Except it’s not addressed to you,” Zach reminded her. “It’s not addressed to anyone. It looks more like a random note she left herself as a reminder. I think it’s nothing.”

  Maltus shook his head. “I highly doubt that. Tara must have written it for a reason.”

  “Then we need to talk to this Danev,” Eve said.

  Maltus’s cheek twitched. “I’d like to know what he has to say about all of this, but I don’t feel comfortable with the two of you heading out that far west. It’s too dangerous.”

  “We have to,” Eve insisted. “We have to figure out who did this and why.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then…” she trailed off. “I’m not sure yet. Maybe once we have some hard proof we can get the police to believe us.”

  “I’ve been trying to convince her that this is all a terrible idea for days now,” Zach muttered. “I figured if she was void-bent on going there, the least I could do is go along.”

  “I’m going to figure this out,” Eve said flatly. “No one else has to come.”

  Maltus’s eyes softened as he looked at her. “The Dusties rule the west, Evelyn. The moment they learn that you’re a mage you’ll be in danger. Vaschberg is dangerously close to Cadotheia and Chaval’s power base. You don’t want to go there.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “But we need to talk to this Danev person. Do you think we can trust him?”

  Maltus studied her carefully, probably wondering if he could still change her mind. “People change, but I’d give him the benefit of the doubt, especially if your mother wanted you to go to him. To be honest, though, you could be going to see the Exarch herself and I still wouldn’t feel comfortable with you heading out there.”

  “Why don’t you come with us, then?”

  He grimaced. “I wish I could, but I have obligations I can’t ignore.” He glanced out to the station and the new train pulling in. “I’m afraid I’m already on a tight schedule. Gregori will keep, though. Why not come back to Lushden with me for a few days? I’ll do what I can to get free and then maybe we can head out together.”

  Zach nodded and slid a hand around her slender waist. “Sounds like a good—”

  “No,” Eve said adamantly, shaking free. “I’ve waited long enough. I’m going to find out what happened.”

  The two men shared a glance, and Maltus smiled tightly. “I know better than to argue with a DeShane when she’s made up her mind. But you need to be careful, Evelyn. And you, Zachary,” he said, eyeing the younger man stiffly, “it’s your job to keep her safe. I hope you learned something in the service.”

  “I’m not helpless, you know,” Eve reminded them tartly, folding her hands across her chest. “I am a mage.”

  “Indeed,” Maltus said. “On that note, I was surprised when your mother mentioned that you were specializing in sorcery. I’d assumed you would follow in her footsteps.”

  “She only decided to do that when some professor told her it was a bad idea,” Zach muttered. “You know how it works with her.”

  Eve shot him an annoyed glare. “They all kept trying to push me into the soft stuff like I couldn’t handle it. I’m smart enough to figure it out.”

  “Modest, too,” Zach chided.

  Maltus chuckled, and the deep lines in his face seemed to relax. “I never said I doubted your ability. You’re a DeShane—if you put your mind to it, you can figure out anything. You just might have to kick and scream a little along the way.”

  Eve smiled. “I’ve already started on my thesis. You should read it sometime.”

  His eyes sparkled. “Well, if I can’t go with you, perhaps this will help.”

  He opened the bag he had brought with him and slid out a book. Judging by the intricate glyphs and formula on the cover, it was obviously a spellbook.

  “A colleague of mine in Selerius gave it to me,” Maltus went on. “If you’ve already started down the path to this knowledge, then I hope this will steer you in the right direction.”

  Eve took the tome from him, mouth agape. “Can’t you get in trouble for this?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said soberly. “I could lose my position. It’s quite illegal to teach someone who hasn’t taken the Oath Rituals yet. The Enclave might even choose to lock me up for it.”

  “I…” Eve shook her head. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t need to say anything—just promise me you’ll be careful. You may have to defend yourself, and there are many ways to do that that you won’t learn in school. I hope Zachary can teach you some mundane techniques when he has a moment.”

  “I’ll try not to be insulted by that,” Zach muttered.

  “Well, thank you anyway,” Eve said, thumbing through the small book, her eyes still wide. “You know, you’re welcome to stay in the house while you’re in Lushden. I can give you the keys, if you want.”

  Maltus smiled and shook his head. “No, I have other friends to see, and I’d like to spend some time at the cemetery while I’m here. There are some things I need to tell your mother.”

  Eve closed the book, and the fleeting smile vanished. “Me too.”

  Maltus stood and gave her a hug. “Send me a wire the moment you find something.”

  “I will,” she promised. “And thank you.”

  ***

  Glenn Maltus turned the corner outside the diner and released the breath he’d been holding since he’d walked in the door. It was much harder than he’d imagined to lie to the girl’s—the young woman’s—face. He’d known her since she was an infant, after all. She was a spitting image of her mother, and behind those amber DeShane eyes he could see the same fiery temperament that had gotten Tara into trouble on so many occassi
ons. But it had also given her strength, and it gave him faith that he’d made the right decision. This deception was for Eve’s benefit.

  Or so he told himself.

  No matter how much the calculating part of his mind insisted otherwise, he couldn’t look into the face of that young woman and see the end of the Fane—the end of the world. Instead he selfishly saw a path not taken with her mother and a future that might have been if things had worked out differently.

  “She has the book,” Maltus murmured. “Now it’s time to watch and see what happens.”

  He stopped at the corner of an alleyway, and a shadow detached itself from a nearby wall. Tall and lanky, the dark figure was draped in a body-length black coat and hood.

  “Such a risk,” she replied, her voice as coarse and accented as ever. “Are you sure it’s one you want to take?”

  Maltus paused and bit his lip. “Tara has been wrong before.”

  “Not often.”

  “No,” he admitted. “But I’m not going to murder a friend’s daughter based on something she hasn’t even done yet.”

  The shadow said nothing. She didn’t need to; Maltus already knew where she stood.

  “Besides,” he added, “she’ll have plenty of enemies looking to do that already. I trust you dealt with the interlopers here?”

  “Four of them are dead, one escaped.”

  Maltus swore under his breath. “They stole the journal. You might have been able to get it back.”

  “Are you angry with me for not killing them all, or yourself for not seeing this coming?”

  He grunted. “Pick your poison. The children’s train should be arriving soon. You need to be on it.”

  She hissed. “You know I don’t like trains.”

  “You’ll like Eve and Zach being dead even less,” he countered. “Make sure no harm comes to them. I still have faith she’ll become what we need her to be.”

  “When will you decide that?”

  “Soon.”

  “And when she fails?”

  He turned to face the shadowy figure. All he could see beneath her hood was the glimmer of her green eyes and a single lock of white-streaked auburn hair dangling from her forehead.

  “Then you get to kill her,” Maltus whispered. “And may the Goddess forgive us.”

  Chapter Two

  “The Exarch tells us that it took the Goddess an eon to create life and many more to refine it into what we see today,” Simon Chaval said to the audience filling the Hall of Innovation. “In her divine wisdom, Edeh understood the necessity of interdependence—she knew that for her children to survive, our fates needed to be linked. And so she gave us the Fane, the grand temple of life that inexorably binds all of us as one.”

  Chaval leaned forward, his eyes drifting back and forth across the crowd. “But now, in these dark times, the Fane suffers as we all suffer. It teems with discontent, for the children have turned against their mother. They have abused the gifts she gave them, and we only have a small time in which to repent for their sins.”

  The crowd broke into thunderous applause, and from her perch on the balcony above the stage, Amaya Soroshi watched it all with morbid fascination. A handful of men in the audience cheered audibly, but the rest were content to let their hands do the talking. It was considerably more dignified than the boorish, bellowing street-side crowds Chaval so often gathered, but this was a group of wealthy investors and entrepreneurs. They at least tried to feign some measure of civility.

  “The Enclave Magisters like to remind us of all the wonders their magic has brought us, and certainly our civilization has grown and flourished since our independence from Esharia. But consider how much of that progress has come not from those privileged enough to walk through the doors of a university, but from the back-breaking labor of real men and women over the last few decades. This room, this hall, this entire city—they are all testaments to the power of the human mind, to the power of visionaries like yourselves who dare to dream of a new Arkadia, one stronger and more self-sufficient than ever before.”

  More applause, this round much louder than the first. It was a pattern Chaval followed with precision. He would start softly and then gradually swell towards a riotous climax. By that point, those who were already part of the Industrialist movement felt more confident in their choices than ever before, and those who straddled the fence found themselves leaping off it to join him. Chaval might not have been a mage, but the spell he wove was just as powerful as the eldest magister.

  He waved a hand to silence the crowd. “We must all take a look around ourselves and examine the state of the world in which we live. We are at war…but it isn’t just our way of life that is under attack. Our very existence is now threatened by the magi and their Enclave. Even in the face of unparalleled tragedy, they continue to insist that they are not our enemies. They claim that the attack on Kalavan was the work of only a few isolated individuals, nothing more. But in our hearts, we all know how tired their excuses have become.”

  Before the crowd exploded again, Amaya decided it was time to try and slide closer to her employer. She wouldn’t dare interrupt one of his speeches, but she did need to get his attention the moment it was over. He would undoubtedly be pleased with his performance, but she knew his response to the message she had just received from Lushden would be less…enthusiastic.

  Chaval stepped in front of the podium, his eyes narrowing. “Two hundred years ago, just before the dawn of our independence, the magi destroyed the small, helpless nation of Vakar. They killed tens of thousands of people, but the Enclave assured us it was merely the fault of a single reckless lunatic. Fifty years ago, the world watched as the Talami warlords wrought final devastation to their own nation, and again the Enclave insisted it was merely the work of a handful of fanatics. And then, only a year ago, we all stood by in horror as thousands of our brothers and sisters were ruthlessly cut down by yet another rogue mage—and once more the Enclave has the audacity to tell us that it was an isolated incident.”

  He shook his head, and his voice darkened. “Well, I say we have endured enough accidents. I say the Goddess has been sending us a message for hundreds of years, and we have simply ignored it. Her Fane is not a tool for us to use; it is a treasure we must protect. It is time we learned to leave it alone.”

  Amaya pushed past several of the other guards to stand at the side of the stage. She didn’t want to distract him, but she knew this speech would be coming to a close soon and she wanted to be ready. She needed to catch his eye before he was swallowed by the horde of quasi-worshippers. It happened often enough she’d come to expect it.

  “A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity stands before us, my friends, and I am proud to see we are embracing it,” Chaval went on. “Instead of twisting the Fane to our selfish purposes, we are learning to be self-sufficient. We are creating a new way of life—a life of innovation, progress, and wonders we have never dreamt of before. My parents never ventured more than a few kilometers outside their home town in their entire lives, and now you and I can ride a train across the whole of Arkadia in only a few days. My grandmother lost her hand to a backfiring musket in the Polerian War, but now our soldiers fight with reliable and powerful weapons that are the envy of the entire world.” He swiveled his eyes back and forth across the crowd, his tone sobering. “And when I was diagnosed with Hulen’s Disease only three years ago, a doctor was able to cure me with medicine and science. Because of the efforts of men and women like you, every day we liberate ourselves from our dependency upon the Fane. And soon we will be able to stand alone. May the Goddess bless you all.”

  Standing a mere fifteen meters away, Amaya expected to be able to catch Chaval’s eye easily, but within seconds of his last word he had already been swallowed by a throbbing mass. Reporters from every newspaper in the country swarmed over him like parasites, and his immediate bodyguards did their best to give him some distance. She sighed to herself and decided to take a different approach—looking at
the crowd below, she found the evening’s guest of honor, Harold Varm, and veered off toward him and the other distinguished inventors.

  She had always found it oddly amusing that despite the near saint-like status most of the Dusties endowed upon men like Varm, the crowds typically mauled Chaval instead and left the actual inventors alone. Tonight was no different. Varm and the others sat alone at a table in the back of the dining hall, and Amaya was able to get close to them without much difficulty. The band in the corner struck up an annoyingly upbeat melody, and many of the evening’s patrons left their chairs to dance and celebrate. They’d been told exactly what they wanted to hear, and that always seemed to put smiles on their faces far more easily than actual facts.

  Few of the people in the Hall had any idea how bad the violence had gotten on the streets here in western Arkadia, and even those who did certainly didn’t want to hear about how many workers had been maimed in the great factories on the northern side of the city. Perhaps the most shocking thing, however, was how all these people were somehow able to ignore the acrid industrial fumes in the air the moment they stepped outside into the streets of Cadotheia.

  It was as fascinating as it was sickening, really. The capacity of people to believe in something despite all evidence to the contrary—that was the most powerful weapon in Chaval’s arsenal, and he knew how to wield it better than anyone. People wanted to feel good about themselves and the choices they had made. They wanted to feel right. And who was he to argue with them?

  Eventually Chaval managed to drift over to the inventor’s table, a wide and utterly insincere smile stretched across his face. He was just over fifty now, and gray hairs were slowly but surely conquering his meticulously trimmed beard. The top of his head was bald, but what remained of his once black dome now encircled a shiny, pale scalp. His eyes were a vibrant brown, and his frame was quite trim and fit for a man of his age. All in all, he was passably handsome without being threatening, and it made him a popular man when he met his supporters in person.