Hearts & Minds

by Gwynn White

  “Are we in Cian?” she called plaintively.

  He had lost track of how many times she’d asked that question. But like the countless times before, he creaked to his feet and shuffled to her. Once stately and beautiful, now a frail old woman looked up at him through rheumy, dead eyes. He stroked her disheveled purple-colored hair and lied, as he had every other time she’d asked. “Almost there, my love.”

  “The emperor needs us.” He grimaced, hating that his Katrina pleaded for his enemy. Her head canted. “I can hear a band. Can you, Felix? And people cheering. It must be a parade for Lukan. I wish I was there to see it.”

  Not usually given to swearing, he let rip a string of internal expletives aimed at his children. If Malika hadn’t confiscated his informa, he could have neutralized Katrina’s ice crystal days ago. But instead of helping their mama, Axel and Malika had chosen to let her suffer as if she were nothing more than a low-born peasant, little better than the two girls in the cell opposite theirs. For days now, he and Katrina been subjected to their wailing. Their father, Zav, hadn’t left their side. With him came two curs, both of which had barked almost continually since leaving Tarach. And not to forget the fleas…

  He would be hard-pressed to forgive Axel and Malika for that affront.

  Katrina writhed against her restraints. “The band. Let me go see the band.”

  Would the Dragon’s cursed minstrels never shut up? He could never tell her that the band played to welcome Nicholas. With her new programming, she’d worry herself to death if she knew that Lukan’s number one enemy was nearby. He clasped both of her hands to stop her fighting. “Soon, my love,” he soothed.

  She wrenched away from him and tried to sit up.

  He pushed her back onto the bench and kissed her forehead. “All will be well, my love. Just hang on a little longer.”

  “Lukan needs me,” she murmured. “He needs us both. We must fight for him.”

  His jaw clenched. As soon as he was released from this blasted prison, he’d find an informa and he’d free Katrina, even if he had to kill someone to do it.

  And as for Axel’s precious systems? He’d hacked into them so often, he’d have no difficulty overriding whatever protocol protected the informa he stole.

  The noise coming from the hangar stilled. He sighed his relief. Did that mean that Nicholas had left the airship? Would they soon be released?

  “Oh! It’s stopped. The band.” A tear ran down Katrina’s cheek. “How sad.”

  The two dogs started to bark, a cacophony that always proceeded a visitation by the guards.

  It set his teeth on edge.

  Sitting in the gangway between the two cells, Zav patted his mutts. “Hush up, the pair of you. There’ll be no more of that racket.”

  The dogs whined. Moments later, boots clattered down the wooden stairs into the brig. Three, maybe four people.

  That was unusual. Normally only one guard brought in food. It had to be their escort to the next hell-hole prison Axel intended for them.

  This could be the only chance he’d get to steal the informa.

  He pressed his face against the bars for a better view of the stretch of gangway outside the cell to find an easy mark.

  A Trevenite captain carrying a bunch of keys stopped at his gate. He had a shotgun slung across his back. Taller than the average Chenayan, he had to duck below the low roof of the Chenayan craft. Would he use that shotgun if Felix was caught stealing the device?

  It was a risk he had to take for Katrina.

  Another soldier walked to the low-born girls’ cell. He nodded to Zav and the dogs. “We’ll soon get you out of here to somewhere more comfortable.”

  More focused on the captain at his gate, Felix listened to Zav prattle his thanks with half an ear. A dozen pockets in the captain’s back uniform where an informa could be hidden mocked him.

  Most likely the ones on his hips.

  But as he only got one chance at this, he had to be sure before he started digging.

  The captain slotted his key into the lock, and the door swung open with a squeal.

  Felix remained where he was. He scanned both pockets with a practiced eye. The left one bulged with familiar informa roundness. Given that the captain had unlocked the gate with his left hand, it followed that he’d keep his informa in that pocket.

  Now he needed to get close enough to extract it.

  He walked to the open gate. “Where are you taking us?”

  “You’ll see,” the captain answered in heavily accented Chenayan. “Untie the countess.”

  “Are we going to Lukan?” Katrina called in a tremulous voice.

  Felix brushed his wispy hair away from his face before segueing into a performance designed to distract the captain for long enough for him to get a hand undetected into the pocket. “Perhaps you aren’t aware that my wife and the two girls become violent when they aren’t restrained.”

  “You’ve only got yourself to blame for that, old man.” The captain pulled a set of manacles out of a pocket. “You know what to do with these.”

  Felix’s sinuses rattled. He stomped over to Katrina. “This woman is your warlord’s mother! You really think that cuffing her is the honorable thing to do?”

  “Cuff me? Felix, who is this man?” Katrina clawed at her mattress. “You said we were going to see the emperor. I’ve been a good wife to you all these years. Why are you denying me this?”

  An icy wave rushed through Felix. “You heard the countess,” he snarled. “I demand to see my son.”

  The captain shrugged. “It was the warlord who gave the instructions before the airship had even landed. Cuff you and all the women, and take you all to the Dark Cave.” He rattled the manacles under Felix’s nose. “Either you cuff her or I will after I’ve done you.”

  Dark Cave! Curse Axel.

  Longing for his handkerchief, Felix snorted loudly. It did nothing to drown out Katrina’s terrified moans. He hated that she was frightened, but he had to play this game to the end if he was to get the tool he needed to rescue her from her bondage to both Lukan and Axel.

  He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against Katrina’s bunk. “I will not cuff my wife. And I won’t just let you cuff me, either.”

  The captain sighed. “Then you leave me no choice.” He yelled down the gangway. “Marrow! Gallen!”

  Felix suppressed a smile as two Trevenite soldiers—both tall, solidly built males—forced their way into his tiny cell. In the crush of bodies, his mark would not feel his intruding fingers.

  “Gallen, get Count Felix away from the bed,” the captain commanded.

  “Yes, Captain Treygan.”

  Gallen stepped in front of him. Fully expecting the brute to use force, Felix braced himself for pain. Still, the notion shocked him. He’d overseen the torture of many people in his long career. If they had told him that one day he would be beaten by his enemies, he would never have believed it.

  Gallen’s rough hands grabbed his shoulders. The brute lifted him right off his feet. He sucked in a breath and waited for the first punch.

  It never came.

  Instead, Gallen eased him out of the way—right into the Captain Treygan’s chest.

  Unable to believe his luck, he slumped his entire weight against the captain. Treygan gasped and lumbered back with him clinging like a limpet to his shirt.

  Quick as lightning, he let his hands—weak and shaking like an old man’s—slide down Treygan’s front. Seconds before ostensibly dropping to the floor, he grappled for Treygan’s hips. Like snakes, his fingers burrowed into the left pocket. His other hand tore at Treygan’s right leg.

  As suspected, an informa hid in the pocket’s depths. Flailing like fish on a hook, he whisked it out. Warmth replaced his earlier chill as he palmed the familiar, comforting device.

  “Hey! Watch it,” Treygan called.

  Felix’s heart stuttered.

  Treygan grabbed him under his arms and pulled him back to his f
eet. “The warlord wants you imprisoned, not injured, old man. So steady on.”

  Nothing about the informa?

  Felix laughed inwardly. Old man, indeed. What a dolt. He may have been deep into his seventies, but he’d still show these whippersnappers a thing or two. He slipped the informa into his pocket. Pretending to stumble, he gave Treygan ample opportunity to slip those dreaded manacles around his wrists.

  “See, it’s no use fighting,” Treygan chided.

  He moaned a pitiful sound designed to allay his captors’ suspicions.

  “Now come,” Treygan said. “The others are waiting for us.”

  Already? That meant Katrina had been cuffed. He’d lost contact with her during his little heist. He spun to find her.

  She was on her feet. Head titled, she studied her manacles with a dazed expression.

  Felix set his jaw into a hard line. Not for long, my love. Not for long. And soon as I have you free of that ice crystal, it will be Nicholas’s turn to be ransomed. Our freedom for his life.

  He had no doubt that Axel would jump through any hoop once he realized that Felix could kill Nicholas with one simple word.

  The fight against the Light-Bearer and the Pathfinder Alliance had just begun.

  Five

  The Voices Slithered

  Lukan’s fingers riffled through lines of green text spewing from his informa. For the last four days, he hadn’t left the pokey office in his battle command center. Furnished with nothing more than a scuffed desk and chair, and a long console of informas linked to the surveillance cameras on 24th Street, the office had been set up as a temporary viewing room for him to monitor the attack on Felix’s secret hub.

  Morass was the only other person in the room. He hadn’t left Lukan’s side since Lukan had discovered Felix’s subterranean hub. Stoic and silent, he guarded the door.

  Lukan almost wished Morass would speak. It would have eased his burden to have someone to share this ordeal with. In the past, Felix had worked by his side. Now it was Felix’s genius that thwarted him with programming the likes of which Lukan had never seen.

  What had started out as simple operation—locate the entrance to the hub, capture the programmers, and bring them and all their hardware to the palace—had turned into a nightmare. General Nahom’s guardsmen had failed to meet that objective not just once, or twice, but countless times. And it was all thanks to Felix’s Dreaded. Except no Dreaded had ever been impossible to decode.

  He scowled at two rows of very ordinary terraced houses beamed above the console of informas linked to the cameras. “Any second now it’ll begin…”

  As if on cue, the buildings creaked and groaned.

  “There…” He slapped his open palm onto the desk as the building shook into rows of tumbledown shops. “Bastards. How dare you defy me?” he demanded of the image. “You even have the nerve to deflect my cannon balls.”

  For days, airships had pummeled the blasted street with cannon balls, but to no avail. How Felix had mastered a shield like that, he would never know. Worse, the traitor hadn’t shared that marvel with him. Such a shield would be useful now that Nicholas was in Treven. Axel’s attack on his palace had to be just weeks away.

  He had to get into that hub. No one in the palace understood how Dreaded were created, so only he could decode it.

  Pity, it’s impossible.

  He tossed the informa he was using onto the desk and buried his fingers into his eye sockets.

  “The scientists in Zakar could have helped you.” Like snake scales rasping on stone, a hundred voices hissed in his head. “But you killed them. Every single one of them.

  Despite bitter experience that engaging with the voices only made them more virulent, he shouted, “I did what I had to do to protect the empire from our enemies.”

  “Enemies! You’re the only enemy. Now you suffer. Alone. Just as you will die. Alone. The ultimate failure.”

  He clawed at his silver buttons. “I’m not the failure. This isn’t my fault.”

  “It’s never your fault. It’s always someone else’s. Who are you blaming today?”

  “Zarot is to blame. And Felix.”

  Zarot had allowed Axel and Lynx to escape from Cian in a stolen airship to rescue Nicholas from Tarach. Felix had assisted that rescue by manipulating the programming of the guardsmen Lukan had sent to capture Nicholas.

  “The result?” he demanded rhetorically. “The traitor has flown off to safety with Axel and Lynx in my airship.” Sweat beaded his lip. Using the tracking device on the airship, he had followed their flight until the airship had vanished into a hangar in the mountainside in Treven.

  And then all monitoring had ended.

  “That swine Felix blocked my access to Nicholas’s ice crystal.”

  The voices laughed. “And you were too stupid to know that Felix had cut you out. Insane. Like your father. No different.”

  He jumped out of his chair. “If you think Felix would have given me the access codes before beating me over the head and fleeing, then you’re the insane one here.”

  Morass shifted from foot to foot.

  “Dragon’s ass!” Lukan yelled at him. “You dare to judge me? Question me?”

  Morass bowed low. “I only wish to serve, sire.”

  Morass’s monotone voice grated. He itched to punch the cretin. While satisfying, it wouldn’t fix anything. He bit his knuckles.

  “There’s no winning this, Lukan. Nothing you do will save you.”

  “That’s because I’m surrounded by fools. Everything I try—Blocked. Thwarted by traitors and curs.” He ignored the voices’ laughter. “I could tweak the guardsmen’s ice crystals to remove their fear of the constructs. Then if I send enough of them in, they will eventually find the place.”

  “Do you really think that will work? Fiddle, and you will compromise their obedience.”

  He hated to admit it, but the voices were right. Now more than ever, he needed unquestioning loyalty from his one million guardsmen. But after four days of little sleep, even less food, and… limited success—

  The mocking voices laughed. “Say it! You’ve failed.”

  “I am not a failure!” He picked up his informa and shook it in the air. Rows of green light spilled over his hand and danced across his face. “I can do this. I just need time.”

  “Time. A luxury you don’t have. Axel and Nicholas could be here in a week. And you wouldn’t even know that they were coming.”

  Sobs wracked him. He slumped down onto his chair and buried his head in his arms. His shoulders shook from his dry heaving.

  Morass shuffled.

  Without looking up, Lukan hurled the informa at him.

  It thunked onto the hardwood floor. He looked up and moaned. That impossible-to-decode green light still burned. Yelling at the top of his lungs, he jumped up and skidded across the office to the informa. He stomped his boot down on it.

  The arrow-straight shafts of light wobbled.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Again, and again, he slammed his boot down on the hateful thing.

  The casing shattered, and the light blinked out.

  Morass’s dead eyes widened.

  Breathing hard, he yelled at him, “Get out. Now.”

  Morass opened the door and scuttled out. The door closed behind him with a gentle click.

  Lukan sagged against the wall. “I’ve won. The light is no more.”

  Yet, above the console, Felix’s holograms still morphed and shifted.

  The voices rustled. “Even in victory, you’re defeated. Felix still has the codes to Nicholas’s ice crystal.”

  His knees caved, and he slumped onto his backside on the floor. He buried his face in his hands and rocked. “They’re in that hub. That’s why he’s hidden it behind such impossible constructs.”

  “You’ll be dead before you find them,” the voices mocked.

  Lukan looked up. Dead? He lurched across the floor on his hands and knees to the console. Crouched before it, he stu
died the constantly changing buildings. Cannonballs exploded in mid-air. Not a single spark reached the buildings. His eyes glazed over, and the image blurred. If Felix could create such marvels, why hadn’t he done a better job of protecting his treasures from Lukan’s initial electronic invasion? Breaking Felix’s encryption had been tricky and time-consuming, but nothing like this.

  A shiver of reality—truth—flushed through him.

  “Because he didn’t create them,” he said hollowly. “This is something else. Something… unnatural.” Still, on haunches, he threw his head back and laughed at the voices. “Thank you! And you say I’m mad. I’m not the crazy one. You are, for showing me this.” He spun full circle on the floor. “Dmitri! So much for your claims that you never interfere with human will! It’s my will to get into that hub. You have no right to stop me.”

  No reply.

  He pounded the floor with his fist. “I know you’re blocking me. I demand you stop.”

  “You demand?” a disembodied voice replied. “Yet every time I’ve pleaded with you to do something—even things for your own good—you’ve refused. Now, like a child, you punch and pout because I don’t jump to your will.”

  Although almost a decade had passed since Lukan had heard that voice, he recognized Dmitri.

  He wobbled to his feet. “I’m not a child. I’m the emperor of the greatest empire this world has ever known.” He clawed at his cravat to pull it straight to make his point. “That hub is in my capital. You have no right to forbid me to access it.”

  “You speak so fervently of your rights, yet you’ve robbed almost every person in the Heartland of their will. What of their rights?”

  In the past, Dmitri had always appeared in a flash of light, wearing a provocative robe made of the old Norin flag. Why wasn’t he showing his face today? The first inklings of doubt that this was indeed Dmitri niggled. “Show yourself to me. Now.”

  None of the tell-tale light that announced a visitation from a dead person flickered. The voice that may or may not have been the seer said, “You lost the right to my presence when you banished Lynx and Tao to the forest. All you get is my voice.”