Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series)

by J. Barton Mitchell

  Avril squared her shoulders toward each opponent, her fists clenched, and she closed her eyes, waiting for the attack to come, already deciding how to strike and where, knowing Masyn and Castor were doing the same. She felt them tense, felt them move toward her, felt her own body instinctively begin to—

  “Enough!” an older voice yelled and a shotgun blast punctuated its demand.

  What was left of the fighting stopped. Avril opened her eyes. Masyn and Castor were flanked now by her father’s men, rifles all pointing at them. A hundred rebels either lay dead on the platform or were on their knees, with their hands behind their backs. The former far outnumbered the latter. Among them, she saw Holt and Ravan and the leader, Rogan West, each bloodied and injured, and every one of the survivors was staring at the figure who had appeared on the platform, surveying the scene with his usual unreadable calmness.

  The man’s eyes swept over the crowd until they found what he was looking for: Holt, Ravan, and West. He stared at them intensely.

  “We’re through here,” Tiberius said. “Which, of course, means we can start all over again.”

  * * *

  THEY FORCED HOLT, RAVAN, West, and what remained of the rebels onto their knees. There was no sign of Olive or her crew that Holt could see. He held a dim hope that they’d somehow managed to undock the Wind Rift and flee west, but he knew that wasn’t likely. Tiberius was too thorough in his planning.

  Holt stared through the Menagerie that surrounded him to the one person he was actually surprised to see. Avril stared back unreadably, Castor and Masyn on either side of her. Then again, she knew now about the role he’d played in Archer’s death, and she’d been in the corrupting presence of Tiberius Marseilles for more than a week. Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised at all. The unconscious bodies of the rebels at her feet showed she’d made her choice. It was too late for him now, anyway.

  Masyn, however, had a different view.

  She dashed forward in a blur of purple light, aimed straight at Tiberius, slamming into the large guards who circled him. Two of them fell instantly, two more staggered back, and Masyn waded into the rest. They swung at the Helix, but she dodged them nimbly, flipping onto the shoulders of one and dragging him to the ground. In the end, she was too outnumbered, and her Lancet was still on her back.

  A fist caught her in the face, another found her stomach. A knee sent her crashing down. Then the others moved in.

  “Masyn!” Castor yelled, rushing forward, ignoring blows from the pirates, watching as kicks and punches drove Masyn into the floor as she struggled in fury to get up. He fought to her side—and he did it with both arms, ignoring the pain of the broken appendage—and leapt on top of Masyn while the blows and strikes from rifle butts continued.

  Throughout it all, Holt stared at Avril. The pain was apparent on her face, the horror at the beating. She took a step forward once … then stopped, went still, torn.

  “Let them be,” Tiberius said. “I don’t want them dead. Not yet.”

  The pirates pulled off Masyn and Castor, but Holt couldn’t tell what shape they were in. He looked up to the man standing above them, and Tiberius’s eyes were on Ravan. Holt felt her hand slip into his, and he held it firmly.

  “I guess we know now the answer to the question of when you will disappoint me,” Tiberius said.

  “I guess so,” Ravan said back.

  “Such a waste, and all of it for him,” he said. Holt felt Ravan’s fingers tighten in his. “Did you learn nothing from me? About power? About weakness?”

  “I learned a lot,” Ravan admitted. “Guess I just valued other lessons more.”

  Tiberius shook his head, genuinely dismayed, then pulled his eyes off Ravan to Rogan West. West had been beaten badly, his left eye was swollen shut, blood caked the right side of his shirt. He stared back at Tiberius savagely all the same.

  “Rogan West,” Tiberius said. His voice, surprisingly, held no menace at all. “There is no shame in this. You tried taking power, as is our way. I respect it, but you have lost, and I’m afraid, this kind of failure comes with harsh consequences.”

  Rogan just shrugged, he seemed resigned. “Do your worst. I won’t be the last.”

  “Without question.” Tiberius looked to Quade. “Make it quick. He’s earned that.”

  Quade’s eyes moved to Rogan, studying him in an odd way Holt wasn’t expecting. Did they know each other? Had they been friends once? Holt wasn’t sure, but there was … something. At the rear of the crowd, Avril watched the exchange intently.

  In the end Quade moved forward and drew his gun, standing over Rogan.

  “And you.” It took a moment for Holt to realize Tiberius’s voice was directed at him. He looked up and met the man’s glare. There was hatred there, a radiating menace, but a smile formed on his lips all the same. “I see it in your eyes. You care again.” He looked down at Holt’s hand interlaced with Ravan’s. “So much the better. Now we can have all the moments we were always supposed to.”

  The gunshot rang out jarringly loud. Next to him, Rogan West fell dead, and Quade lowered his weapon. The crowd of pirates cheered so loudly, Holt almost couldn’t make out Tiberius’s next words.

  “Prepare a Nonagon match tomorrow, these four will be its competitors.” He meant Holt, Ravan, Masyn, and Castor. “Don’t hurt them anymore. The crowd will want a good show for Faust’s reunification.”

  The violent, malevolent cheers intensified, and Holt looked at Ravan. She stared back, and he could sense the same calmness in her as in himself. The strange tranquility that came with knowing you no longer had anything left to lose.

  30. DINING ON ASHES

  MASYN SAT WITH HER BACK against the wall of the small wooden cell pod. She wasn’t tall, but could still barely stretch her legs outright. A few hours ago she felt the cell shake as it was moved down the giant rack system, onto the floor, disconnected, then transported somewhere else. Most likely they were on some kind of lift that would take them up to the Nonagon. Judging by the muted roar she could just hear outside from some huge crowd, the time for that was drawing close.

  Her rings and weapon were gone, she’d lost them and was now shamed. Perhaps up there, facing death, she could restore some of her honor, she could still die well. Let it come, Masyn thought. If they expected her to be frightened, they would be disappointed.

  Castor was curled up next to her, still and unmoving. Masyn had taken her share of pain earlier, but his had been far worse. She still remembered the way he leapt on top of her, ignoring his wounded arm, absorbing blow after blow meant for her.

  She stared down at him softly. Like her, he had lost his Lancet and rings. Like her, he had fallen in battle. She should find him repellent now, dishonored and insignificant … but she didn’t. In fact, she was more drawn to him than ever and it made no sense. She embraced Gideon’s teachings. They were harsh because they had to be, but she was finding them difficult to swallow when it came to Castor.

  The boy moaned, shifted a little, and Masyn ran her fingers through his hair. He calmed at her touch.

  Masyn had never been one for tenderness—it was detrimental to survival, but Castor, in the last few days, had somehow brought it out in her. He had the same walls, all from the same source, and yet always reached out to her. She had seen it as an annoyance before, a sign of weakness, but now she wasn’t so sure. If she ever had the opportunity again, she wouldn’t push him away so quickly.

  The cell rattled as someone landed on top of it. The impact was soft and muted, not the clumsy footfalls of a Menagerie, and Masyn frowned. There was only one person it could be.

  An observation slit at the top of the cell slid open. As it did, the sounds of the roaring crowd somewhere above grew louder. A figure peered down from above and Masyn looked back. Avril’s look was a mixture of emotion. Masyn’s, she knew, was pure hostility.

  “Come to gloat?” Masyn asked. “You can save your breath.”

  Avril said nothing, just looked at Castor o
n the floor. “How is he?”

  “You saw what they did. Twenty of them kicking and beating him while he was unarmed and already hurt. There’s no honor in that, your people have no understanding of the word.”

  “They aren’t my people.” Avril’s voice was heated, but Masyn scoffed.

  “Really? Then why aren’t you in this cell? You can’t even see how much you’ve changed, Gideon wouldn’t even recognize you.”

  “Gideon’s gone, Masyn.”

  “So that’s your reason to spit on everything he taught you? You must never really have believed it.”

  Avril’s hand shook on the edge of the observation slit. “My father told me what Holt did.”

  “So what? Holt told me too, why does that justify abandoning everything you used to stand for?”

  Avril’s voice lost its edge. “If I had been here…”

  “But you weren’t,” Masyn replied. “Your father told you what Holt did … but did he tell you why?”

  Masyn educated Avril, telling her everything. What Archer had been about to do, what Holt had stopped from happening. As the words spilled out, Masyn could see the horror grow in Avril’s eyes.

  “Brother or no brother, that wasn’t right,” Masyn said. “Holt stopped it. He sacrificed basically the same things you did in order to do so, and I would have done the same. What about you, Avril? What would you have done in that room?”

  Avril was silent a long time. “Maybe I could have stopped him from becoming what he became. Maybe it’s my fault.”

  “Gideon told me once that holding on to the past is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else,” Masyn said, her voice dropping. “In the end, you’re the one who gets burned.”

  Avril studied Masyn quietly. “I can get you out of here, both of you. You can escape, before the match.”

  Whatever sympathy Masyn had for Avril fell away, and she stared back with disdain. “You really have changed, haven’t you? I’m supposed to run away now, like some scared little Outlander? No. We’ll face what comes, we’ll show all of you what real strength is. Maybe then you’ll remember who you are.”

  “You’re going to die, Masyn,” Avril simply said.

  “When did that become more important than honor?” Masyn held Avril’s gaze a second more, then looked down. “Go away, Menagerie. No one knows you here. No one wants to.”

  The observation panel slid closed and Avril was gone. Masyn sighed and looked back to Castor on the floor. He moaned again, and she took his hand in hers.

  * * *

  RAVAN SAT CROSS-LEGGED NEXT to Holt, her stare fixed on the cell floor. She’d worked loose a rusted screw, but not to use for escape. Instead, she was carving pictures into the old, faded walls and floor of the cell, drawing the same thing, over and over: two mountains, trees in front of them, a body of water in front of that. It was crude, but Holt could make out what it was. Soon the only place that wasn’t full of the image would be the ceiling.

  “Why are you drawing that?” Holt asked. He wasn’t sure she’d even noticed the cell being lowered and moved to the main lift for the Nonagon, or heard the muted roar of the crowd above.

  “Keeps my mind off being in here.” Her voice was shaky. “I hate being locked up.”

  It was her worst fear, being restrained, Holt knew, held in some tight, confined place, and this cell certainly qualified. “I meant why are you drawing that?”

  “It’s the only thing I can draw,” she replied. “You remember that guy when we were kids? Taught you how to paint in that super-simple-looking method on TV?”

  “Bob Ross?” Holt asked, surprised he remembered the answer.

  “Yeah. Him. I got it from his show, my mom watched it all the time, not that I know why. She never painted a damn thing. Anyway, it was either this or play tic-tac-toe with myself.”

  “You know, not long from now, you might actually miss being locked up.”

  Ravan shook her head. “No way. We aren’t getting out of this, but at least I get to go down being free, not caged up like some animal. The Nonagon, far as I’m concerned, is a much better option.”

  Holt watched her carve the final squiggly lines on the water, then shuffle back and start again on one of the floor’s remaining blank spots. He understood the desire to not die in here, rather outside where she had some measure of control over her fate. The problem was, Holt wasn’t completely convinced they were done.

  Now that he was coming back, now that he was feeling again, he wasn’t so eager to just throw in the towel. As bad as the Nonagon was, he’d survived worse. The battle at the Severed Tower came to mind, the onslaught of the Mas’Erinhah, the huge Spider walker falling and crushing him. He’d died there, but he’d come back. If he could make it out of that, he wasn’t going to just resign himself to death now. Of course, none of that was to say it would be easy.

  “How many Nonagon matches have you seen?” he asked, starting to think of possibilities. Only one stood out, an impossibly insane one.

  “Dozens, I guess,” Ravan replied, concentrating on her mountains. “Why?”

  “How many teams have you seen beat it?”

  She stopped carving and brushed back the long lengths of black hair out of her face so she could stare at him dubiously. “No one’s beaten the Nonagon in three years.”

  “That just means someone’s due up,” Holt replied. “Beating the Nonagon is the only way out of this.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Surviving it doesn’t help us, Tiberius will just keep throwing us into it over and over until we’re dead. He wants a show. But if we beat it … we get the Boon.”

  The Nonagon had two victory conditions: surviving it and beating it. The Boon was only given out to those teams who beat it, and it functioned a lot like a Menagerie Solid. If it was within the power of Tiberius to grant, he had to do so. Of course, no winner had ever used it for anything other than sparing their own lives and being let free, which was sort of the genius of the design. You only really had one option when it came to the Boon, but Holt could think of another. Maybe the one loophole that could get them out of this mess.

  “You really think Tiberius is going to let that happen?” Ravan asked.

  “He doesn’t have a choice; they’re his rules, and rules are everything here. Whoever beats the Nonagon gets the Boon, and the Boon trumps it all.” The next part, Holt said pointedly. “Even the rule that says only Consuls can challenge him for leadership.”

  He could see Ravan understood what he was implying, and she seemed even more skeptical. “We get the Boon, I challenge Tiberius, kill him, and take his place? That’s your plan?”

  “Who’s better set up to pull it off than us? We have our experience, we know the arena. Not to mention two White Helix. Even without their rings, they’re unbelievably agile.”

  Ravan’s hard look began to soften as she thought it through. “We give them the high parts,” she mused, thinking, “the combination unlocks.”

  “Exactly. You said it yourself, you wanted to go out with your fate in your own hands.”

  The sounds of the crowd above them seemed to be growing louder, more violent. Ravan shook her head and looked back down to the floor. “Well, it’s not like there’s anything left for us to lose. Is there?”

  Holt could see defeat in the way she held herself. She had no real hope of any of this working, no real faith. He didn’t blame her, it seemed crazy even to him, but something about how distinctly she had gotten to this hopeless place bothered him. Ravan had always been, if nothing else, full of confidence. Even in the face of death, she laughed and shrugged and waded into the conflict. It was something he’d always found attractive about her: her vitality, how alive she was. Now it was gone, that vibrancy, and it was his fault. His actions had led to her losing everything she ever wanted or achieved, had led to her being in this cell with him right now. It was a tough pill to swallow.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this, Rae,” Hol
t said, his voice soft. “I really am.”

  Ravan didn’t react the way he expected. She smiled, exhaled a short, sarcastic breath. “Been thinking about the past a lot,” she said, without looking up. “I told you about my father.”

  “Yeah,” he answered. She’d told him all the details, and Holt knew he was the only person she had ever shared that truth with. He hated that man almost as much as Ravan did, for what he’d done.

  “I left home when I was twelve,” she continued. “Stole some money, bought a bus ticket. Right clothes, right mind-set, it’s amazing how much older you can seem. No one even questioned me. I don’t know if I ever told you, but I had a little sister, about two years younger. I could see him looking at her the same way, you know? But while I was there, he never laid a hand on her. I knew when I left that would change, but I left anyway. Left her there, with him. Invasion happened pretty quick after that, don’t know if she made it or not.”

  She looked up at him, and he could see in her eyes just how haunted she was.

  “Out of all the things I’ve done, all the choices I’ve made, you know what’s funny?” she asked in a hoarse voice. “I don’t regret any of it. Even leaving her with him, I don’t regret it at all. What does that say about me? About who I am?”

  “You were twelve years old, Ravan.”

  “So the hell what? That doesn’t matter.”

  “It does.” He tried to be firm, to get through to her. “If you could go back, right now, as you are, what would you do?”

  She didn’t hesitate to answer. “Save her.”

  “Exactly,” Holt replied. “The reason you don’t regret it is that you know there’s no call for regretting things you had to do, and in all the time I’ve known you, I never once saw you do something you didn’t have to. Except … when it came to me.” The last bit stung more than he expected.

  “No.” Ravan shook her head, kept staring at him. “That I had to do too.”

  Holt held her gaze. He knew she meant it, wished he could repay her somehow, but really what else was there at this point, besides words?