Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2)

by J. C. Staudt

  “Well shucks… I was just tryin’ to be nice. Didn’t know that was a crime in these parts. Heck, I didn’t know there was such a thing as crimes in these parts. You southerners sure are a peculiar bunch.” Lokes took a deep breath and spat.

  “I don’t think it’s peculiar to be skeptical of people like you. Or to want my freedom, either.”

  “Suit yourself, Shep.”

  “I’d like to, but it’s a little hard with my hands tied.”

  “You want to get out of those again, you can ask your brother.”

  “Doesn’t it seem weird to you that a man would have his own brother kidnapped just to talk to him?”

  “Sure it does. But I ain’t gettin’ paid to think, Shep. What I’m gettin’ paid for is to bring you to him.”

  “What’s going to happen to you two if you don’t get paid?” Toler asked. “I heard you talking earlier. You’re in some kind of trouble, aren’t you?”

  “I got no idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

  “What’s that thing around your neck?”

  Lokes grunted, tucked it underneath his tunic, and said, “You ain’t makin’ no sense today, Shep. Ought to get your eyes checked.”

  Toler could see he wouldn’t get anywhere with that line of questioning. “Any chance she has the power to grow tobacco?”

  “Do all the bellyachin’ you like. You’re the one’s held us back this long. Closer we get to Belmond, closer you are to having all the smoke you ever wanted.”

  We’ll see what the starwinds have to say about that, Toler thought.

  When Weaver returned with the horses, she was wearing only her trousers and a sleeveless undertunic. Her hair hung black and wet past her shoulders, the daylight shining soft on the pale cleanliness of her skin. Lokes looked her up and down as she approached, giving her an approving little grunt when she handed him his horse’s reins.

  Weaver ignored him.

  Toler remembered little of their journey after that, except that while the sandcipher couldn’t grow tobacco, she could make survival on the wastes easier than it had ever been with the caravans. They never had to carry excess water or large stores of food; Weaver caught game when they were hungry and created wells whenever they had a thirst.

  One evening, the sandcipher formed a pool large enough to fit all three of them at once. Toler refrained, sitting by himself to watch as his two companions stripped down and hopped in. The horses came to drink while Lokes and Weaver splashed each other, laughing and shouting. There was a moment when Toler thought their games might turn violent, but when they emerged from the pool, their bodies glistening in the twilight, he saw it was love on their minds, not war.

  They rode into Belmond a few days later, crossing into the outskirts as the starwinds faded with the first light of morning. Weaver was in the lead, but when she came to the place where the sand ended, she pulled hard on the reins to keep her horse’s hooves off the cracked gray road ahead.

  Lokes sighed and shook his head. “I tell you what… one of these days, you gotta get over this fear of yours.”

  “Fear of hard ground is the healthiest fear a person like me can have,” she said.

  A sandcipher loses her power when she leaves the desert, Toler remembered. In order to use the sand, she has to touch it.

  “Come on,” Lokes said angrily. “We’re late enough as it is without all this superstitious mumbo jumbo of yours.”

  Weaver gripped her reins. She didn’t move from the edge of the pavement until Lokes took hold of her horse’s bit strap and pulled her along with him. The sandcipher shuddered as though the sound of horseshoes on asphalt were as jarring as nails on a chalkboard.

  Toler hadn’t set foot in this part of the city in years. Whenever he arrived with a trade caravan from the east, they entered the Scarred Comrades’ territory through the Garbage Gates, a heavily-guarded passage whose gigantic hinged doors were reinforced with layer upon layer of scrap metal and hard plastic. The stench was different down here, stronger and more obscene. It was the kind of smell you only got on the breeze from time to time in the city north. Here, it was constant and oppressive.

  “This place is a filth bucket,” Toler said. “No wonder you met my brother here.”

  Lokes snorted. “I can’t wait to sell you for a fistful of money.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “A little place called the Scorpion’s Uncle.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “I reckon someone like you ain’t cultured enough for such a fine establishment.”

  “Whatever keeps your feet cold,” Toler said.

  Lokes was calm and watchful as they rode through the city’s twisted skeins. Weaver was nervous and frightened. On the wastes, she had never seemed more uncomfortable or less at home than she was now. Toler was beginning to see why these two needed each other so much: here in the city, Lokes and his sweeties were the force to be reckoned with.

  Lokes and Weaver knew these roads, making every turn as if from habit. Their path took them down a two-lane street to a place where the road dipped toward a pair of tunnels running beneath a larger highway. The faded green sign overhead named these the westbound lanes of the Harcourt Tunnel.

  Weaver reined up on the rise, shaking her head. “I don’t want to go this way. Let’s go around.”

  “No time for that,” said Lokes, forging ahead.

  “Too dark,” said Weaver. “Too dangerous.”

  “Not for me,” Lokes replied. He patted his guns. “Stay close. You’ll be fine.”

  The horses’ hooves echoed on the concrete retaining walls as they descended the slope toward the tunnels. Morning lit the city around them, but the tunnel entrance yawned into a darkness so long and deep that Toler couldn’t see daylight from the other side. They stopped a few fathoms into the right-hand tunnel to give the animals’ eyes time to adjust before moving on.

  Daylight faded behind them, and all around turned to echoing black.

  They were a long way in when something shook Toler in the saddle. He put a hand on Seurag’s neck to soothe him, thinking the horse might be trembling from fear or cold. When something shook him harder a second later, he knew it wasn’t the horse. A tremor.

  No sooner had the thought occurred to him than the tunnel began to shake. The ground convulsed and swayed until the world around seemed to be on no more stable a footing than a ship on the ocean. There was a thunderous crack, so loud he thought a chasm might open beneath his feet. Dust showered down, and he heard larger chunks of rubble crash to the floor nearby. Weaver was yelling, the horses whickering and sidestepping… and then everything stopped.

  The dust settled.

  Silence ensued.

  “We gotta go back,” Weaver said. “We’ll get crushed down here.”

  “We’re halfway through,” said Lokes. “No sense turnin’ back now. C’mon.”

  For a time, the only sound was the clop of the horses’ hooves. Toler wanted to dismount and hug the ground, such was the combined effect of the quake and the pitch-darkness. His cravings for a good long smoke weren’t helping either. Then there came a different noise from down the tunnel. A scrabbling, faint and faraway at first.

  “Did you hear that?” Weaver asked, too loud.

  “I done heard lots of things,” said Lokes. “None sweeter’n the sound of your voice, my li’l turtle dove. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.”

  She shushed him. “Stop. Listen.”

  They halted. The sounds were getting closer. They were dreamlike, hazy and diffused. Toler’s eyes had adjusted, but Lokes and Weaver were still no more than shadows atop their horses. Just then he would’ve given anything for a quiver of javelins and his old machete. He had left his javelins at home, and the machete at the border of the Skeletonwood, embedded in his brother’s arm.

  The sounds came closer, solidifying into something more distinct. Grunts. Howls. The slap of bare feet on pavement. Whatever they were, there was more t
han one of them, and they were moving this way fast. Weaver’s horse stamped and nickered. She let out a cry, something Toler couldn’t make out, whether for the noise or the ineloquence wrought by her fear. He heard Lokes moving, saw him turn his horse and swing out in front of them.

  “Don’t you dare run, Jal,” Lokes said. “You neither, Shep.”

  “What are they?” Weaver asked.

  Lokes didn’t answer.

  Toler wanted to know too, though his desire was fading by the second. “Either of you have a weapon I can use? If it comes to a fight, I’ll give it back when the fighting’s done. Promise.”

  Weaver’s shadow moved. Something hit Toler in the arm and clattered to the ground. He dismounted and felt around for it as the sounds grew louder. His fingers closed around something. It was sharp. He gasped and pulled away. A moment’s examination proved it to be a blade of some kind—a short sword or a long knife.

  He found his horse and mounted again, every instinct telling him to flee. What had Lokes been thinking, leading them into the dark like this? Jallika was powerless here, and frightened out of her mind. The starwinds were shaking the world loose. Yet for some reason the deadeye remained as unflappable as ever.

  They were almost on them now—whatever they were. Toler gripped the blade in one hand and held the reins tight in the other. Maybe I won’t get to see my brother again, he reflected. Won’t get to give him the end I promised. And worse, Nichel will think I’m a traitor, or that I ran away because I was afraid of him. Afraid of marrying his daughter. Reylenn will live out the rest of her days never knowing why I left or what happened to me. That’s a terrible thought.

  It was a thought that made Toler Glaive want to live.

  CHAPTER 25

  Pupil

  Every night another hike through the city; every day a new bed or patch of ground to sleep on. And every evening when Raith Entradi awoke, a new mob of hopefuls had gathered outside whatever rundown outpost they’d taken shelter in, clamoring to see the healer.

  There was a growing sense of agitation with each healing Merrick performed. At first, people left after they’d been healed. They weren’t leaving anymore. In fact, the mob had multiplied. The crowds which had once congregated around the night fires only to vanish by morning were now camping out, following Merrick and the Sons of Decylum like sheep.

  By such miracles does the healer grow his flock, Raith reflected. And as the flock grows, the wolves gather at the fringes. He had been training Merrick for a short while each day, focusing on what he knew about the gift—which was to say, everything but the healing part. Merrick had taken to that well enough, once he’d learned his ignition trigger. It must become a habit, Raith’s Uncle Vigden had always told him. Habits are hard to break. That was how Raith had always trained the younglings; he’d taught them to find their triggers and make habits of them.

  He had seen a change in the young healer these past weeks as well. Not just a change in skill, but a change in temperament. Raith suspected this was an expression of Merrick’s latent insecurities. There was an anger in him, and as his following had grown, so too had his pride.

  On the positive side of things, Raith and the Sons hadn’t gone without food or water in days. Merrick’s healing carried a cost—one which he accepted in the form of tithes and donations. His followers, even the ones with nothing to give, were seeing to it that he never wanted for anything.

  The Sons had split off from the flock this afternoon to search Belmond’s eastern outskirts, where the Scarred had first attacked them. They were getting close to Bucket Row now, and Raith wanted to make sure they kept several city blocks between them and the hidden sentries Merrick had warned them about. A daytime excursion put them at higher risk of being seen, but this was their only chance to scour the area before Merrick and his flock moved on.

  “Do you remember where you were when you saw Hastle go down?” Raith asked Gregar Holdsaard.

  Gregar spent a moment in thought. “Hard to say. It was dark. Everything looked different.”

  “What happened after that? Talk me through the events of that night. It may jog your memory.”

  “I’ve replayed it so many times in my head…” Gregar said. “I saw Hastle fall, went and ripped up the guy who’d shot him, then went back to where Hastle was. He was dead before I could do anything. We were on this busted-up section of rooftop somewhere. Not a rooftop; more like the second floor of a building with no walls around it. I saw a couple soldiers go over and check on the one I’d just killed. They saw me and started shooting. I put up my shield. I was pissed. Just coffing livid. I remember leaping onto them, shredding them both, but when I got down there, there were a bunch more I hadn’t seen. They were shooting at me from every direction. I couldn’t handle them all, so I… I lost my nerve. I took off. Not proud of it, but I’m not going to lie… that’s what I did.”

  “It’s alright, Gregar,” said Peperil Cribbs. “A lot of us ran that night. What choice did we have, with hundreds of trained soldiers trying to kill us?”

  “I just feel like I could’ve done something more,” said Gregar.

  “As do I,” said Raith, “but it’s over and done with. Regret is merely worry in past tense. We all have to make peace with our regrets, just as we mustn’t allow our worries to consume us.”

  “I’m going to get consumed by Infernal if we stand out here too much longer,” said Derrow.

  Jiren agreed. “Me too. Let’s spread out and start looking.”

  “Stay low,” Raith warned. “If you climb any buildings, make sure you’re out of sight from those high-rises across the freeway.”

  The Sons dispersed through the ruins. Telltale signs of that fateful night’s conflict punctuated the landscape: spent brass casings, heat-baked bloodstains, mangled firearms, and smooth curved sections of edifice that could only have been cut by the shields of blackhands.

  The occasional bodily remnant provided a more grisly reminder. What the city’s inhabitants hadn’t scavenged from the site, the light-star had reduced to bones and tatters of cloth. The only smell was of decay long completed, death a mere suggestion on the breeze.

  “Found something,” came a shout from above.

  Raith turned toward Bucket Row, toward the downtown skyscrapers draped across the horizon like ragged silver scarecrows. He saw movement in a high window, a glint of daylight.

  He waited a beat.

  Just a trick of the light, he told himself, heading toward the source of the shout.

  Edrie Thronson was climbing down from an open relic of a building with one rubbled corner and no roof, freed from his leg and shoulder injuries thanks to Merrick’s healing. In his hand he held the commscreen, shattered and scuffed, black and red wires hanging from the power cell compartment. When Raith approached, Edrie handed it to him. “Doesn’t look like we’re calling home any time soon.”

  “Were there any others?” asked Ernost Bilschkin.

  Raith shook his head. “This was the only commscreen we brought with us. Unless someone else brought another of which I’m not aware.”

  “We have no Wickman and no commscreen,” said Ernost. “We have nothing.”

  “We have the Glaives,” Theodar reminded him. “They were our fallback if all else failed. It seems we’ve reached such a juncture.”

  Gregar considered this. “Were we planning to stop by soon?”

  “They don’t live in Belmond, remember. Their estate is located in a small town southwest of here, within the crescent of the Skeletonwood.”

  “It’s no wonder people have lost track of the Glaives over the years,” said Ernost. “Back when Hastle was working for them, Glaive Industries was one of the largest corporations in the Inner East. The company went under a few years after the Ministry dissolved. The fact that the Glaive family fled to the frontier makes me wonder if their ties to the Ministry were stronger than my research has led me to believe.”

  “I’m sure their affiliation with the Ministry wouldn
’t have been public knowledge,” said Theodar.

  “You’d be right to think that,” said Ernost. “Decylum’s databases were expunged during the Ministry meltdown. The information that remains to us—as inconclusive as it may be—strays far from what the public would’ve had access to in the old days.”

  Hayden Cazalet scratched his head. “So you think if we find whoever’s left of the Glaives, they’ll not only help us get home… they’ll tell us why Decylum was built in the first place?”

  “Isn’t that something we’ve all been wanting to know our whole lives?”

  “I know I have,” said Gregar. “And my mother before me, fates rest her. She was part of the second generation in our family born blackhands. Third, after her sister and brother. We’ve all wanted to know.”

  “Isn’t it strange how no one does?” said Hayden. “You’d think somewhere along the line, it would’ve come out.”

  “Our ancestors were oathtakers,” said Raith. “They swore to uphold the Ministry’s secrets, most on pain of death.”

  “And as far as we know, most have gone to their graves without breaking those oaths,” said Ernost. “Many thought the Ministry’s dissolution was merely a test of their loyalties.”

  “That doesn’t mean the Glaives were sworn to secrecy,” said Theodar. “The Glaives living today aren’t the same Glaives who filled the Ministry’s order to build Decylum. They may have looser tongues than their forebears.”

  “We can only hope.”

  “Someone should ask them why they didn’t build it bigger,” said Jiren Oliver.

  “It was the right size for what they needed at the time,” said Ernost. “Decylum was only supposed to house about four hundred people. That’s including scientists, technicians, maintenance workers, and their families. We’ve grown to well over twice that number, even after our losses…” He trailed off.

  Raith thought of his niece Meluria, Petra’s daughter, who had moved into Atton Mews’s hab unit when his ailing father died. Xeb Mews had left his son alone with a sprawling six-room dwelling, which would’ve been lavish for any family of five by Decylum’s standards. Raith suspected Meluria’s move had been more about escaping her parents’ cramped living space than because she felt strongly about Atton.