by CM Raymond
“Hey, Parker,” she called after him.
Turning at the door, he waited.
“I’m glad you made it back.” She gave him a smile that could melt the Frozen North.
He nodded. “Me, too.”
****
Adrien paced down the hallway lined with administrative offices toward his destination. To his right was a line of windows looking out on the quad. The night sky had turned cobalt blue, marked with even darker blue clouds. Another day had passed—another day closer to his plan taking shape. Even knowing of the progress, the Chancellor was growing impatient, and Elon needed more magicians—and he would get them, one way or the other.
Without announcing himself, he pushed through the Dean’s door and into her office.
Amelia stood, pulling the spectacles from her tired eyes. “Chancellor, I wasn’t expecting—”
“Amelia, please, sit.”
She glanced out the window, orienting herself to the time of day. The life of the Dean was rigorous. Add a heaping spoonful of colluding with the local rebellion and hiding it all from your boss, and you end up with a full calendar.
Amelia leaned back in the chair behind her desk. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m here about the Scholar’s Program. You’ve given me some great students—”
“I’ve given you the best,” she said politely. “How are they doing, by the way? I haven’t heard a peep from them since.”
Adrien nodded. “Of course, you haven’t. They’ve been studying with me and getting some, well, practical experience. Arcadia is doing well, Amelia. We all know that. Sure, we have some issues in the streets, but this place had become much like my dear mentor wanted it to be.”
He paused and looked at her. A chill crept through her body.
He continued. “But we don’t want life here to be good, do we?”
“Sir?”
“We want the Arcadian life to be heaven on Irth. And we have an opportunity to usher in that utopia. Don’t you agree?”
Amelia smiled. “Adrien, you moved me into this position because I am a practically minded woman. I pay no heed to imagined republics or heavenly realms. Instead, my work is to train these students, what they do after is up to them—and, I imagine, you.”
“Yes,” Adrien said, “some of us dream and others do the work necessary to make those dreams a reality. I guess that is why I put you in the chair you're sitting in now—because I trusted that you could do the work sufficient to carry out all my dreams. Like finding me young scholars for my program.”
She rubbed her eyes with the balls of her palms and looked back up at the Chancellor. “I’ve given you so many.”
“Yes, you have. And now… I need more.” A smile crept across his face. “I know you have so much to give, Amelia my dear.”
Amelia flips through pages on her desk, stalling. “I’ve given you my strongest candidates. Maybe it is time to consider your team sufficient for now. These new students are so young, we should let them develop a bit before they undergo something as... rigorous as your scholarship. By late spring, I am sure some more will rise to the top, but if we keep pulling the best out of the classroom—”
Adrien slammed his open hand on the desk. “No!”
Amelia jumped, and Adrien could see the concern in her eyes. “Forgive me,” he said. “It’s just that my work is so important. I really can’t wait. There are students here who would fit the bill. I don’t even care if they’re your best students—it’s potential that is important. Power. Pure sheer passion. No need to wait for the professors to develop it. Give them to me, and I’ll see that they are put to the best possible use for Arcadia”
Amelia could feel sweat rise on her forehead, but she didn’t want him to see her wipe it away. She nodded. “All right. I will do what I can. Give me a few days, and I’ll have more names. But I can’t guarantee that they’re great students.”
He nodded. “I don’t need them to know the damned parlor tricks that August teaches them in the classroom. Might be better if they are unrefined. I can draw out of them what I need.”
Amelia’s eyes were locked on Adrien’s. She swore to herself that she wouldn’t look away. She swore she wouldn’t give any indication of the rebellion, and the fact that she knew what he was doing. “It will be done.”
“Good,” Adrien said, licking his cracking lips. “Now, enough business. What do you say we have dinner on Friday—in my private apartment? There’s something else I’d like to straighten out.”
He winked, and Amelia’s stomach churned.
“It would be a delight,” she said, and then she watched the man she swore to take down leave her office.
****
Standing over his drafting table, Adrien was happy to be alone. With all that was going on in the city—between the Prophet, the anti-Prophet, and that bitch magician—he had precious little time to attend to his most recent project.
It had taken him years to work out the plan for the war machine, but the time he had allocated there was worth the while. His airship would make his armies unstoppable. But there was still one thing that nagged at his mind.
Adrien was confident that he could beat Ezekiel in a fight. When Adrien was young, Ezekiel was a force of nature, unmatched in his abilities. But that was half a century ago. The Founder was ancient now, and Adrien had spent years improving his martial skills.
But there was no reason Adrien couldn’t give himself a slight advantage. After all, he hadn’t maintained his position this long without taking extra precautions.
“It has to work,” he whispered into the lonely tower as he made the final pen strokes on the drawing he would give to the Chief Engineer—a special suit of armor for a special purpose. If Ezekiel is fool enough to test me, it will be the end of the Founder.
A knock on the door interrupted his contemplation.
“Enter,” he shouted, annoyed by the disturbance.
The door flung open, and Doyle stood in the space, looking like he’d been to hell and back.
A smile formed on Adrien’s face. “I will assume that since you are here, there has been success abroad.”
The man nodded, beaming with joy, despite his exhaustion. “Yes, sir.”
Adrien grabbed two glasses from the bar in the corner of the room and poured the mystics’ ale. “Well, then, we should toast to your victory—Arcadia’s victory. Come, Doyle. Sit.”
He shoved a glass into the man’s hand as he dropped into the leather chair. Doyle’s eyes were hollow and his face pale.
“We’ve brought back the artifact. I’ve only just dropped it at the factory. Elon is looking at it even as we speak.”
Adrien crossed his legs. “How?”
“We all but died retrieving it. The Frozen North is every bit as terrible as they say. But it was where Elon—where you said it would be.”
“Excellent! I had no doubt that you would succeed. And Stellan? What about our mysterious friend?”
Doyle paused, staring at his glass and turning it in his palm. It was Stellan who found the artifact, not Doyle. The Chancellor’s assistant had no reason to distrust him. And yet, he made Doyle look like a fool in front of the other men.
“Spit it out, man” Adrien cried.
“I think you were right about Stellan, sir. He was acting strangely; I think he might be your spy.”
Adrien scowled. “I thought as much. It was probably those damned mystics. I bet they turned him. Or maybe it was his own greed... Your contact, are they still following him?”
“Yes, sir. They also report that he is acting strangely, although they were unable to discover any concrete proof.”
“Find out,” Adrien barked. “I don’t care what it takes, how much it costs. If Stellan has turned, then he is working with someone. I want to know who that is. Have your source stick close. I want to know everywhere he goes, everyone he talks to. Hell, your person should be able to tell us when he takes a shit and if it comes out easy.”
A warm pleasure filled Doyle. He thought about the look on Stellan’s smug face and imagined it in pain once the Chancellor got a hold of him.
“Absolutely, sir. I’ll get to the bottom of this. Stellan will be unmasked—and we’ll find out everything he knows. You can count on me.”
“I know I can, Doyle,” Adrien said with a smile. “I know I can.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Gregory removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. They had grown weary after staring for hours at the plans for Adrien’s machine. He had the blueprints unrolled on his workbench in the basement of the mansion, trying to decipher their exact meaning. If anyone on the team held the ability to keep Adrien’s mighty airship on the ground, it was him. But he had hit a wall.
Tracing his finger over the parchment, he outlined the shape of the ship itself. His father’s perfect drawing created an oblong body that was several times as long as it was wide—like a cucumber from a farmer’s field.
From either side, there were two fins that stretched out. Each was nearly as long as the body of the craft. There was also a dorsal fin on the back, which contained a large magitech mechanism. Gregory knew that these wings would assist the ship in steering once it was airborne.
But Gregory still couldn’t figure out how the hell they were planning on getting the thing off the ground.
The blueprint’s scale showed that the thing was a monster. It would take a lot to power it. That’s what the stow of amphoralds in the midsection of the ship was for. From the looks of the drawing and the reports of the rearick, they would have tons of the gemstones in there, ready to hold more power than any device he had ever seen.
Its power was undeniable, but Gregory couldn’t understand where they were planning on channeling it.
He dropped his finger onto a vague piece of equipment drawn in the dead center of the airship. While the rest of the plans were described in detail, only a single word was written next to that tech: Thule. The word was as unfamiliar to Gregory as the tech was.
It gave Gregory a strange feeling, as if his father knew that something would go there, but had no idea what it looked like—which made less sense than a flying ship. Elon had drawn everything with such precision; ambiguity was out of character for him.
“What are you?” Gregory said to the drawing.
“I might know,” a gruff voice said from behind him.
Gregory jumped, spun, and looked up into the murderous eyes of Stellan, the Captain of the Guard.
“Shit,” he cried, and as he did, Stellan’s eyes flashed white. The ogre of a man transformed into the beautiful master mystic from the Heights.
“Sorry about that,” Julianne whispered. “I’ve gotten so used to keeping the disguise on… especially through that mission. Keeping my mask intact for days straight nearly scrambled my brain.”
Gregory’s heart slowed, but only a little. “No problem. And welcome home! I didn’t realize you had gotten back.”
“That’s because it just happened. Ezekiel told me you were in the basement with plans for Adrien’s machine. I think I might be able to help.”
Julianne took some time to share the details of her journey to the Frozen North. He tapped his foot, impatient for the punchline. Mystics were amazing storytellers, but now, he just needed answers.
“When Marcus, the new Guard, and I were trying to find our way out of the crevasse, it came into view.”
“What?”
She held a cupped hand up over the workbench, and a cloudy image appeared. He had heard of the mystics’ ability to tell the best stories and to use mental magic in doing so, but he had never seen it before.
“That,” she said.
The image was of the crevasse. As Gregory shifted his position, he could see the context from multiple perspectives. The scientist in him longed to know what was even happening—how she did it. It was large and wooden, half smashed to pieces and half frozen in the ice. But it was unmistakably an airship, like the schematics laid out on his desk. Julianne pinched her fingers together and then slowly drew them apart. The image zoomed in through the wood on a piece of metal that glimmered in the light of their magitech.
“What the hell?” Gregory whispered.
Although it was sharp, he could see that the thing was some sort of mechanism—for what, he didn’t know. He had seen drawings of old great machines from before the Age of Madness. His father had some of these locked away as relics from the past. But this was beyond anything Gregory had ever seen.
“What the hell is it?” he asked.
“That is knowledge beyond mine.” She said. Then she placed her finger on the center of Elon’s blueprints. “But I bet it goes there.”
“Son of the Bitch and the Bastard!” he yelled. “Whatever you brought back from the mountains—it’s some sort of technology from the old world. And it’s precisely what will make the ship fly.”
Gregory grinned and leaned against the table.
Julianne shook her head. “My master, Selah, used to say that ignorance destroys. I thought my mission was a test... a vanity project of Adrien’s. I had no idea that I was giving Adrien exactly what he needs to destroy us.”
Gregory placed a hand on her shoulder. “It’s OK,” he said. “You can’t be blamed for what you don’t know. My father and Adrien, they’re the ones to blame. They know exactly what bloodshed this will cause, and yet they’re doing it anyway. We’re only destroying lives if we refuse to act on what we do know.”
Julianne smiled. “Gregory, you speak with wisdom beyond your years. It is a shame you didn’t grow up among the mystics.”
The young man blushed at Julianne’s high praise.
“So,” she said. “How do we stop it?”
The young engineer laughed. “I have no damned clue. That’s the problem.” Gregory fell silent. All expression left his face. “But, I know someone who does.”
****
Gregory walked the silent streets of the Noble Quarter, brooding over what to do next. Although, none of the nobles needed to pay much attention to the curfew—it’s not like they were going to get in trouble with the Hunters and the Disciples—they feared what lay behind their beautiful oak doors. Adrien and the Prophet had spent years warning them of the dangers within their city, and the nobles believed. So, as the sun was starting to set, Gregory walked the streets alone with his thoughts.
The conversation about the piece of technology that Julianne brought back from the mountains was enlightening, but Gregory was no closer to finding out how they might be able to dismantle it without blowing up half of Arcadia in the process. He needed to think—and the mansion was too crowded for that, so he took to the city.
The day before, he had collected as many magitech tools as he could find and dismantled them, carefully lining their parts up on the floor of his workshop. Life, for him, had been one that revolved around these tools. Elon had been one of the first graduates of the Academy to really advance the magitech, and he did so by burning the midnight hours in his own workshop at the house that Gregory had grown up in.
Taking all the technology apart, he hoped to find something that would grant him a clue. But it was Julianne who showed him the way. Ancient technology, powered by a large magitech core, that was Adrien’s plan. That was his father’s design.
There was no way to dismantle it remotely, and despite the talented magicians that met night after night in the mansion, they couldn’t just blow it out of the sky, not something that large, not without exposing themselves in the process.
And the engine, whatever its origins, would be placed close to the magitech core. If that thing cracked... it could spell disaster for the city. So, even if they could get close enough, brute force wouldn’t work. They’d have to dismantle the engine, piece by piece, which would take time. Which meant they’d have to take the factory by force, and without the help of Karl’s people, they were woefully outnumbered.
It was a riddle without an answer. Adrien had design
ed his master plan well.
After a few blocks, Gregory’s mind started to wander. The houses got more lavish as he moved toward the Capitol. He had grown up in privilege all his life. Like a fish in water, he didn’t spend time thinking about his environment. The Noble Quarter was simply his home. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Now, he saw it with different eyes. The wealth of the place, which always seemed normal to him, stood out like a weed growing through the living room. Coming to know Hannah and Parker changed how he considered his own home.