Whispers of the Skyborne (Devices of War Book 3)

by S. M. Blooding

  “I have faith,” I said, not really feeling my words, unable to chase the Skyborne from my mind. “We’ll come up with a plan.”

  She nodded, swallowing, her grip tightening on her brother’s hand. “Let’s create a plan that doesn’t get us all killed. We need to change our world, Synn. Now. We cannot continue to allow people like our mother to control our world.”

  I whole-heartedly agreed.

  MY SISTER WAS WELL. THOUGH, something nagged at me. Mother had dosed her with something to make her asleep for almost a day. That had to be a poison, right? It could have been a drug, I guessed, but why? What would the point have been? And when I’d asked Oki, she’d redirected the conversation.

  My sister was in trouble. I didn’t know how bad or what kind. I simply hoped she’d find a way around whatever it was. I knew that hope was stupid, idiotic. I’d get her to tell me. She was the only sister I had left.

  And our best weapon against Ino Nami. Or the star person controlling her. I had a hard time wrapping my head around this enemy. Who was I fighting?

  “Have we heard anything from Peacock Rock?” I asked as I followed Neira out of the hospital. The mountainous island was riddled with caves and tunnels. And if Neira had taken a personal interest in it, then that mountain had to be significant. Maybe it was the location of the island to a bay of the Kiwidinok wildlands? I didn’t know. Maybe the tunnels wound underneath the ocean and actually connected Kiwidinok to Peacock Rock. The idea seemed preposterous.

  But I’d just discovered star people, so I really needed to reassess my definition of the word “preposterous.”

  Neira shook her head. “Peacock Rock will hail us if they need assistance.”

  “No.” I’d learned a lot about Neira in the past couple of hours as well. “If the Han is attacking him, and if his position is as important as you say, then we need to assist.”

  She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, widening her stride. “The Han has been trying to gain Kiwidinok for years. He’ll be turned away. He always is.”

  “What would you tell me if I said that?”

  She glared at me.

  “Why would he choose Peacock Rock? There are other islands closer. Koko Nadie would be a better string of islands to take.”

  She tipped her head to the side in acknowledgement as she continued walking.

  Her silence made me cautious. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  She gave me the barest of head shakes.

  So, maybe the tunnel system wasn’t as preposterous an idea as I’d originally thought. “He can get onto Kiwidinok through the tunnels of Peacock Rock. That’s why he’s attacking. That’s why you kept Garrett there, and that’s why you’re worried.”

  Neira stopped and shoved her face in mine, her dark eyes hard and fierce.

  “All this effort for pleron he can’t even use?”

  “If you believe this ‘programmer’, then, yes. But we have other things. We are the largest, most fertile continent. We have resources, food, water.” She narrowed her gaze, her lips thin. “We’re the greatest supply for grown food.”

  “The Han doesn’t seem to be interested in food.”

  “He has an army.”

  I raised my chin. “He does have an army.”

  “That many mouths requires a lot of food.”

  I jutted my jaw and lowered my head, then looked at her through my eyelashes. “And a lot of hands to weaponize. Maybe these star people, or Skyborne as they called themselves, can’t use our pleron for their ship, or for more of these nanites, but the Han can still use it to build weapons.”

  She bit her bottom lip and turned her face away in a grimace.

  I stared at her aghast. “Were you really going to keep this from me?”

  “You haven’t been someone I can trust, Synn,” she hissed. “You dump this league on me, all the leadership and responsibilities, and then you go into hiding and seclusion.”

  “Here. In your city.”

  “You can be in a location and still hide.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me away, though we were still in the open. There were no structures to hide behind, or to duck into.

  I allowed it. “You could have gotten my attention. You could have asked for my help.”

  She stopped and whirled on me, fury flying from her lips in the form of spittle as she spoke. “I did, you dung humping beetle. You growled at me, raised your Mark to me, and told me to leave you alone.”

  I pulled back slightly, raising my gaze to the flax ceiling. I ran my tongue along my front teeth and retracted my tongue with a sucking noise. “I did. I’m sorry.”

  She tugged me closer, her ferocity only growing stronger. “You’d watched your tribe blown out of the sky while you were helpless to do anything, save any of them except your brother. And your brother lay dying, barely conscious.” She jerked my arm, her teeth bared, her eyes blazing. “I understand where you were.”

  I met that gaze, fighting not to shy away from it. “I should have been there for you.”

  She released me, her lips curling as she stalked away. “I needed you to process. I needed your rage to build, to mold, to become something we could use.”

  I clenched my teeth. Why was I always a tool to be used? I was tired of it and more than ready to become something more. I followed.

  After several ground-eating steps, she slowed her pace and shook out her hands. “But you appear to be back now, walking the world of the living instead of the dead.”

  It’s where I belonged. It was time.

  She glanced at out of the corner of her eye. “That is good.”

  Yes. It was time to do something, and I was tired of asking questions and doubting myself at every turn. What we needed was a goal, something on the horizon to aim at. But I’d learned through the past season that just having a target, any target, wasn’t enough. It needed to be the right one.

  The Han wasn’t our real enemy. He was nothing more than a puppet of the Skyborne.

  Ino Nami wasn’t our real enemy. She was merely a high-ranking card in the game the Skyborne played.

  No. The Skyborne were our real enemy. Only, we didn’t know where their star ship was, or how to get to them. We only knew that one programmer had given us a chance. Nix and I could “hack” the code, whatever that meant.

  What good would it do us? What could we do with that?

  But for now, they needed large quantities of pleron and we could keep that from them, keep it from the Han.

  We needed to get to Peacock Rock.

  I narrowed my eyes and shook my head. “The programmer said the nanites were made from pleron, but pleron’s black. The nanites are silver.”

  Neira tipped her head. “It also said they processed the metal differently? That they lost a lot of the pleron in the process. Stripped away the impurities? Would that make it stronger, do you think?”

  “Perhaps. Why?”

  She turned and walked away again. “I’ve seen their land walkers, Synn. They’re made of something silver. We don’t have anything here that can do that. At least not that I’m aware of.”

  I kept even with her. “Does this have any special meaning for you?”

  “The Hand’s weapons, the bullets, they do not penetrate this new metal. We had thought they’d discovered a new metal, but if this is pleron, then perhaps we can discover this new process and create bullets that will penetrate that armor.”

  I nodded. “We should speak to Joshua.” Our genius technology developer whom I hadn’t seen or heard from in months.

  “He has not been reachable.”

  “What do you mean?” It was one thing for him to ignore me. I was a friend, but ignore Neira, to ignore the league? “Is he ignoring you, or is he hiding?”

  “There is much you do not know about your inventor friend, Synn. He is a powerful asset, to be sure. However, he disappears for extended periods of time and no one is able to reach him. The Hands of Tarot worked very hard to free him from Sky City. How well d
o you know him? Where do his loyalties lie?”

  He’d been my friend while I’d been in Sky City, but we never confided in one another. Not like Haji and I. “I’ll speak to him.” Fierce words for a man who couldn’t get Joshua to message him back.

  “That would be wise. He gives us much, and we are becoming more and more reliant upon his technologies. This does not make me comfortable when I don’t have a clear understanding of where his path lies.”

  She had a point, but I didn’t believe we had anything to fear from Joshua. It wasn’t like him to side with the Great Families. He wouldn’t side with the Hands, either, would he? After all, they had made him an orphan. But unlike Keeley, he remembered life as a member of the Great Families. That didn’t matter, though. My conversations with him had been the guiding force to create the League of Cities in the first place. I would speak to him, but I knew I could trust him.

  But the Carilyn said he might know about the nanites, and had called them by name. Was he working with our programmer, or was he being controlled by the other Skyborne, the ones who wanted to destroy our world so they could breathe?

  “Fine. The Han is trying to get to you through Peacock Rock. Then, why are we stuck in a lake? Why aren’t we finding a way to get there? To help Garrett fight?”

  “Who says we aren’t?”

  Yet one more reason I didn’t enjoy being in a letharan city. In the sky, even with our pressurized ships, I could tell when we moved, if we were above a storm, if the sky was clear, if we were near the ocean. In a lethara, I had no way of knowing unless I was in the control room and someone told me.

  Neira raised an eyebrow and waved me off. “We’ve been able to gather some information thanks to Carilyn. It was wise to keep her. Based on the Han’s movements, he’s headed here.”

  “What movements?”

  She stopped, pulled out a map in the tube strapped across her back, which I’d assumed was an empty quiver, and flung it out on the floor at our feet. “The Han has taken all of the islands of Arabnia. Absalom, Firdos, and all the other islands in between.”

  “Those are Haji’s lands.”

  Neira gave me a dry look. She moved her fingers up the chain of larger islands. “Once he reached Grec, he met with opposition. He was able to take Sinai and Benta, but no others.”

  “And now he’s at Peacock Rock.” I traced the path from Benta to the Koko Nadies where Peacock Rock was nestled on the south side of the island chain. “It’s a straight shot to Kiwidinok.”

  She nodded, her lips flat.

  “Fine. Then how do we stop him?”

  She smiled. “I have a plan.”

  Peacock Rock: Garrett

  A BOOM RICOCHETED THROUGH THE large cavern. Dust cascaded from the rocky ceiling.

  Garrett, leader of Peacock Rock, shook the dust out of his shaggy hair and eyes as he studied the map. “Tell me again, Shawn. Where’re his forces?”

  A scrawny man, barely out of his adolescence gave the map a beady frown and jabbed his stubby fingers at two entrances on the far side of the island. “There and there, sir.”

  “Why in the dung heaping dirt would he choose to dig there?”

  “Don’t know.” Shawn scrubbed his dirty blonde hair out of his eyes. “In any case, those areas don’t matter, but those earth diggers are serious things, sir.”

  When Synn had dumped them on this island, Garrett had been hopeful of living a peaceful life, of leading a safe existence for the few people he’d been able to save from Egolda City as it fell. Here, they were safe from the feuding of the Great Families. Here they were safe from their vile secrets and their hording of a metal no one ever used. Here they were safe from the prying eyes of the Hands of Tarot.

  Neira Vashkelran from the continent, Kiwidinok, had located him, though, and had let him know just how unsafe he really was.

  His island, Peacock Rock, guarded the undersea tunnels between the Koko Nadie Islands and Kiwidinok.

  Garrett wanted to punch Synn in his cocky, self-serving, much-too-young-to-be-leading face. On a lethara, if danger had presented itself, they could have fled. Above water. Under water.

  Here, they were trapped.

  Kiey ran into the cavern, a new scar etched across her leather chest plate. “Sir, they’ve launched a digger on the Rose Cavern.”

  The blood drained from Garrett’s face. Rose Cavern was on the one side of the mountain he’d never expected an attack. Sheer cliffs protected it with a deep, harsh bay directly underneath. Only those familiar with the island would even know of the wealth that was kept on that side of the mountain. “How did we not see where they were going? Those earth diggers are enormous.”

  “The storm? Or that we didn’t think they’d even try it? There isn’t enough ground for them to even set up a digger, sir.”

  “Then how in the bloody blazes did they get one set up?”

  “This one’s different, sir. We’re calling it an earth eater.” She flailed with one hand. “We just don’t have any other way to describe it.”

  Garrett shook his lowered head. “Diversion. The diggers on the other side of the mountain were a diversion.”

  “That’s a possibility, too, sir. What do you want me to do?”

  “Have they discovered the entrances?”

  She shook her head harshly. “We caved them in as you ordered. There’s no way through there.”

  “Except by digger or eater or whatever you want to call it.” Shawn shifted his weight from one foot to the next, his tongue darting out briefly. “They can get in anywhere with that thing. It doesn’t matter how many entrances we cave in.”

  “What about our entrance?”

  “How could anyone discover it?” Kiey flexed her hand on the butt of her plasma pistol. “We barely know it’s there.”

  Garrett bit his lip. Hard. “Land eaters? What is it?”

  “Something new. It twists and burrows. The earth just disappears.”

  Shawn glanced at her, alarm turning his skin ruddy. “But we’re still safe. Earth diggers couldn’t make it through the rock of Rose Cavern.”

  “I know.” Kiey met Garrett’s gaze. “But this thing will, and the way I see it, we’ve got about another thirty or forty minutes before they break through.”

  Garrett closed his eyes. “And slaughter our children, women, and elders.” He opened his eyes again, scrambling for a plan. They didn’t have time for him to be indecisive. How many had died because he’d been indecisive the day their letharan Egolda City had been blown to pieces by the Hands of Tarot in their search for Synn? No. He had to make a decision.

  But what? What?

  Kiey put her fist in the middle of the map to get Garrett’s attention. “I’ll start evacuating Rose Cavern.”

  “To where?” Garrett glared at the ceiling of the cave, trying to see through it to the area outside it. “We have a storm attacking our coast. We can’t take them outside.”

  “We can get them to Koko Nadie.”

  The air caught in Garrett’s chest. “That’s dangerous.” Not all the tunnels were stable. Sometimes, they collapsed and you didn’t know which ones were underwater until you started down the tunnel. If the Han chased them, they’d be led straight to their death.

  “It’s our only choice.”

  Even good swimmers would struggle if the tunnels were flooded. What about the children? The babies? The elders? He shook his head. “They won’t make it.”

  Kiey pushed off the table. “Fine, then find another place for them to go to.”

  Garrett thought for a long moment, then a thought hit him with a wash of gooseflesh. “Vlerooon Bay.”

  Shawn’s eyes widened. He backed away a step, shaking his head.

  Garrett nodded. “It’s a good plan. We know of the dangers of that bay. We can use them to our advantage.”

  Kiey narrowed her eyes, nodding slowly. She tapped the table and spun. “I’ll make it happen.”

  One problem solved.

  She stopped at the ca
ve entrance. “But you–” She pointed her finger at him. “–get the Vash on that dung humping radio and tell her to hurry. We’re out of time.”

  That wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have.

  In the Enhnapi control room, I studied maps of the tunnel system with Neira. We had been traveling along them, going through Kiwidinok while the storm raged. Though, it had been hours. “We should probably do something about those tunnels.” I gathered the map, readying to leave.

  “We can’t.” Neira turned to the command room, looking over one of her tech’s shoulders to view the screen. “There are too many.”

  I sighed, shaking my head, but left. Personally, I didn’t think I’d allow that excuse. “Let us know when you’re ready.”

  Her lips quirked as if acknowledging my unspoken thoughts. “Weather reports still aren’t good.”

  I nodded, but didn’t break stride. When Enhnapi breached the gulf between Kiwidinok and Peacock Rock, my fleet were going to launch. We were going to take to the sky and attack from above while Neira and her lethara came from underneath and fortified Garrett’s position from within. Even though we’d been traveling for hours, the same storm that had hit Lake Chatan was also slamming Peacock Rock. That would make any air strike difficult. Yes. We’d battled Tokarz in a sea storm, but we hadn’t been close to land. That provided a whole new danger.

  I took the elevator platform down to the docks. My commanders were already gathered, waiting for me.

  “What is this, El’Asim?” a tall, burly man with a dark, full beard said, his voice deep.

  “Mudar.” I took his arm in greeting. He had been a trusted friend of my father’s. I worried that he would not see me as an equal of my father, someone worthy to take his place. But I needed his experience. “Peacock Rock is under attack.”

  “And we go to assist him.” He nodded to the other commanders behind him as if they’d already had a discussion about this. “Because it is under our protection.”

  How much should I tell them? How much could I trust to them?

  The time for second guessing was at an end. I had to be the leader I was, not the leader my father was, or my mother, or anyone else. I could only be myself. And I gave the information I had. I didn’t hold it back without great reason. “Not really. They’re neutral. Garrett refused our protection.”