Subterfuge: A Cultivation Academy Series (Bastion Academy Book 3)

by J D Astra

  I got up, then tiptoed to the door. I slipped out, wincing at my aching muscles. Ko-nah moved down the central hall to the fūdō. He was going slow enough for me to follow, but didn’t look back. He jumped into the wind tunnel and blasted straight up. After another moment, when he didn’t come down, I stepped to the edge and looked up.

  Silvery purple ry munje lit the opening of the top, but I couldn’t see anything else. Was I really going to go up there like this? I shook my head at the stupidity of my thought. I was superior to Ko-nah physically—on good days. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

  I created enough en to cast the air shell spell, then stepped through the opening. In a whoosh, I was thrown out of the school through the top, just like my first day. I looked out across the twinkling horizon with wonder. Kokyu was still awake.

  “Paddle forward,” Ko-nah said.

  I looked down to see him a few meters below me on the slanted roof of the building. I made a forward swim motion and eased out of the blowing stream of air. Gravity resumed control of my body, and I held my arms out in the stop motion, dropping unceremoniously onto the roof with a thud.

  Ko-nah walked out on one of the four beams supporting the massive roof. I followed tentatively, staying at least two meters back in case of a surprise attack. I looked from pillar to pillar, trying to spot any of the very well-hidden cameras I assumed would be up here. I still had a fair amount of energy from dinner, so I began cycling for ma, just in case.

  “Ena?” I asked, hoping he gleaned my meaning from the single word.

  “Too much interference from the enry spell created by the fūdō.” He gestured toward the air current behind me.

  I scowled. “What spell?”

  Ko-nah chuckled. “You didn’t think Ena would let anyone walk up to her doorstep, did you? She protects the whole hill with all kinds of traps, many of them fueled by the air.”

  Not the information I came for, but still good to know. “What do you want?”

  He laughed again. “This is about what you want, Jiyong. Information. Feeling a little lost?”

  A breeze picked up over the treetops, chilling my skin. I crossed my arms. “Why do you think I’d listen?”

  He shrugged. “You were just betrayed by your girlfriend, your mentor, your buddies—you’re out of options.”

  Chapter 27

  “THEY WERE DOING WHAT they thought was best,” I fired back, angry for the truth of it, and his exploitation of the truth to get a rise out of me.

  Ko-nah hummed. “Hopes and good intentions don’t do you much good when it comes to trust, does it?”

  I clenched my teeth and looked to the towering city in the distance. The wind carried soft noises from the nearby market. Sonma was still bartering away, using the power of electricity to keep the bazaars well-lit. They drank and gambled too, but nothing like in outer-city. Sonma was more like the outskirts of Busa-nan than outer-city.

  Homesickness washed over me in a wave, and I wished I’d never met Ko-nah. I wished the drugs had never come to Busa-nan, that my mother had never taken that potion, and that my father had never left.

  “Everyone I’ve ever trusted has lied to me on this journey,” I said in a moment of weakness. Why was I confiding in this traitor?

  He sighed deeply. “I’m sorry.”

  “Say that to Se-nim’s mother, or Gui-ne’s fiancée. Say that to the thousands of people you hurt or killed back in our homeland.”

  “I wish I could!” he yelled, his fists shaking in frustration. “I wish I could undo everything and start again. I wish I would’ve killed that fujek sangomnyon Wong and taken my mother deep into the hills.” His arms dropped to his sides, and he closed his eyes. “I was too weak, and for that, I truly am sorry.”

  Unlike his hollow apologies of the past, I felt the weight in his words. The deed he’d done was heavy on his soul. I wondered if he had imagined he would go so far—take lives to save one he loved. What would I do to save Minjee or my mother? Could I have done the same?

  “Then you should’ve asked for help,” I snapped. “We offered it to you many times.”

  He scoffed. “You never cared about me, you only cared how much I’d seen of your ghost.”

  “With good reason!” I yelled back, indignantly. “Can you imagine what kind of power Dokun would have now if he’d captured me?”

  “So, you offered hollow salvation to save your own skin?” he asked, true emotion showing in his reddened face.

  My voice caught in my throat. Was that not what I’d just shamed him for doing? On a smaller scale, but yes... I had sacrificed Ko-nah’s wellbeing to serve my own needs instead of trying to find another way, a path that didn’t have suffering.

  “What could I have done if you wouldn’t cooperate with me? How could I help you if you never told me what you were up against?” I posed back, feeling less certain my words had much ground.

  Ko-nah shrugged and slumped to the slanted roof tiles. “How could I put faith in someone who made hollow promises and judged me so harshly?”

  I scowled. “Those were my personal thoughts.”

  “And I could hear how you lied to me at every turn and plotted against me, so how could I share anything with you? Use every resource, every insight. Use everything you have to survive.”

  I frowned as I looked at Ko-nah in a different light. Those were the words of Yumemo clans—caravan raiders and wandering nomads of the north. “So, you’re a Yumemo?”

  Ko-nah’s glare turned dark. “I was raised among them, stolen from my home, when I was just a child. The Yumemo came to my village and destroyed it, then took every woman and child...” He trailed off, his eyes losing focus as he stared through me.

  “Mother—my birth mother—died before I was six. The woman I call mother now raised me as her own because she could bear no child. We never told Wong I wasn’t her birth child, for fear that he’d cast me out on the spot and call my mother’s heritage into question as well... Needless to say we made a lot of mistakes to cover sloppy lies.

  “But she wanted to give me a good life. She loved me like a real mother would. One night, she carried me away from the clan into the forest. We huddled in dark caves and secluded glades for weeks, attacked by monstrous horrors you wouldn’t imagine. She defended me from all of them until her body was broken. I took us to the only place I knew she could get help... back to my home, to Busa-nan.

  “She didn’t make it past the main road, but we were fortunate when wansil Wong’s carriage passed. He stopped and took pity on my mother. Took her in to heal her wounds and tend to me, a helpless boy. I think he had a heart, then.

  “Mother was taken with him. She wanted to be his wife and care for his every need, but Wong wouldn’t divorce—his pride couldn’t stand it, even for love. When his wife died, there were whispers that my mother was responsible for it. There was a black cloud over our heads, but it didn’t stop Wong’s love.

  “They were married, and when he discovered she could bear no child, he was furious with her. She had lied to him. She had said she was withholding pregnancy to keep their love affair a secret.”

  There were tears in his eyes, and he sniffled them back. He scoffed. “I’m sorry I’ve burdened your conscience with my sob story.”

  “That’s not what I was thinking,” I protested.

  “I know the inside of your mind well enough,” he said.

  I opened my mouth to fire back, then snapped it shut. He was just trying to control my emotions and manipulate me. Well, I wasn’t going to be manipulated. I was going to do what was right.

  I took a few deep breaths as we sat in silence. The moon’s light cast rainbows through our cold breath while I considered his words, trying to decipher which were real. I felt Mae’s presence at the periphery of my mind as she did the same, weighing the words to find their truth or treachery.

  Something had changed in him. During the fight with the shūspekta he went for help, then fought beside me against the bear. It could’ve killed hi
m, but he put his life on the line to preserve mine. Maybe he’d only done it to try to ensure he could barter a deal out of me to get away from Kokyu, but I didn’t think so. I’d seen him when he was lying, watched him deliver it with perfect ease like a stage performer.

  But there was no composure to his words, no play he was trying to put on. He was angry with himself and what he’d become. He had been desperate, and had never known kindness except from his mother. I hadn’t trusted the rich pungbahn at Bastion when I’d first arrived—and some of that was warranted—but not just because they were well-off. Hana and Yuri had proven that even those raised in riches can be kind and dependable.

  I thought back to how he spoke to me in the forest. He’d checked over his shoulder to see if I was listening, but really he wanted me to see he was being genuine...

  Except for one part.

  “What you told me in the forest before we fought the shūspekta was a lie? She wasn’t your real mother,” I finally said.

  Ko-nah looked to me with a furrowed brow, his tears stopped. “I used a small lie to uncomplicate my true story so I could explain it faster,” he corrected.

  I chuckled softly. I had done that many times over the course of the mission—small, semi-truthful lies to get myself out of trouble. “I guess we have little lies in common, then.”

  “Lying. Making mistakes. Misjudging people. It’s life.” He exhaled hard, as if pushing the weight of the statement away from his body. He didn’t want it to be real, and neither did I.

  “Some mistakes have been greater than others,” I said.

  I’d been so stupid about Eun-bi’s situation in my first year. I should’ve taken a handout to save my sister—my pride wasn’t worth her life. I could’ve tried to negotiate with Hiro in the garden. If he was telling the truth, I could’ve saved a lot of people. I’d been angry and headstrong. I’d believed I could not escape my fate except through action. But what if my inaction was what was needed?

  “Some mistakes exceed what we can repay in a lifetime,” Ko-nah whispered and stared out at the twinkling city. Candles and simple electricity lit the houses of Sonma, but far beyond, the towering spires of Kokyu’s capital shimmered in bright colors.

  A chill ran down my spine, and I stood, wrapping my arms across my chest for warmth. “What matters is that we try. We must try to repay our debt of misdeeds, cleanse ourselves, even if we may never truly be clean.”

  Ko-nah’s eyes snapped to my face. “Do you believe in second chances?”

  I quirked an eyebrow and looked down on him. “You’ve blown past that already.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Fine, third chances. I swear to you on my mother’s life—on the woman who raised me—I don’t want you or the others hurt. I don’t want Busa-nan to fall to war, and I don’t want Dokun to rise to power. I’ll do whatever’s necessary.”

  Was this real, or just another lie to save himself?

  “I think we should give one another every chance we have earned.”

  We were quiet for a moment, then Ko-nah cleared his throat. “Have I earned a third chance? If not, what do I have to do?”

  I took in the young master of ry and deception. “Fight alongside us when the fighting starts. Defend us so—” Pain shot through my skull and I winced.

  “Good ol’ Silence Pact,” Ko-nah said when I’d regained my senses.

  “Defend us so we can protect the world from the evil here,” I finished the thought.

  He furrowed his brow sarcastically. “Oh, is that all? Do you know the power of this evil? You may as well have just asked me to commit suicide.”

  I harumphed. “What is it you think we’re all here doing?”

  He tutted and looked out across the city once more. “The fact is, I’m trying to help save the world from Dokun, too. And your father...” Ko-nah shrugged. “He’s trying to save his family.”

  I scoffed. “Even if that wasn’t a lie, it’s pathetic. He hasn’t changed, and this is exactly the thinking that had him holding a knife to his wife’s throat.”

  “You’re wrong. There’s more than one way to kill a man, you know. His plan doesn’t involve putting you in harm’s way, if you’d just hear him out.”

  I sneered. “I did. It included hiding away for years to become powerful enough to fight. He’s always been a coward, running away from everything in his life.”

  “Your instructors had no idea what they were going to face. That was why Woong-ji agreed to send you home after the tour of the facility. They know they’re going to fail and they can’t lose you—” he stopped mid-sentence, flustered, then pointed to my chest—“you to the enemy.”

  “Why wouldn’t they just tell us, then? They had to take away my freedom to choose my own fate? For Mae to choose hers?” I snarled.

  “Because they didn’t trust you—” he pointed to my face—“to make the right choice.” He air quoted the words.

  Heat filled my cheeks and the tight, head-drooping sense of shame swirled in my gut. They didn’t trust me. This was all starting to make sense.

  “Oh,” Ko-nah snapped his fingers and reached inside his robe. He put his hands to his back and then pulled something free with a jerk.

  My family portrait!

  He offered it to me. “They didn’t want you to stay, but I did. So, I figured if you managed to escape your father’s grasp, and you were going to try for the original plan—whatever that is—you’d need all your tools, right?”

  I took it and mumbled a thanks, then hid it in a similar way as Ko-nah had. “How did you know I was going to escape from Hiro?”

  He raised a cocky eyebrow. “Really? You somehow managed to overpower him last year—a seventh-band munje user. I didn’t doubt you’d figure a way to do it again.”

  “Seventh-band user?” I scowled. “Really?”

  I remembered seeing Woong-ji’s seven interconnected bands from my first year, then flashed to the image of Hiro hanging in the air over the ocean, forcing water out of the massive submarine. How were they so different in power?

  Ko-nah nodded. “Oh, and the whole thing about how you can remotely access machina at a master level, and you have a built-in assistant to do all your math for you.”

  “Mae is not an assistant. She’s a person trapped inside me, and she performs tasks for me to keep herself from... getting bored.” I grimaced, trailing off.

  ‘You don’t think I treat you like an assistant, do you?’

  Mae snickered. “Of course not. We’re friends, and I’m making my keep by helping. Sometimes you even listen to me when I give you advice. That’s always nice.” She ended on a clearly sarcastic note and flashed a winking face in my vision.

  My frown deepened. ‘Really comforting. I’ll do better to treat you as an equal. I promise.’

  “Thank you.” She sent little hearts floating up through my vision.

  “We better get back. I’m not sure how long my ry shield will last,” Ko-nah said, turning away from me. He stopped at the edge of the fūdō and looked back. “Wait a few minutes, would you? Two boys coming back to their room at the same time may raise suspicions I don’t want to deal with.”

  I grunted. “Surely a few innocent rumors wouldn’t hurt on top of everything else?”

  “Don’t be an ass.” He waved and jumped into the spell stream. With a whoosh he zipped up into the air, then closed his arms and dropped below the edge of the roof into the building.

  “What are you thinking?” Mae asked, though she was fully capable of checking without my awareness. I appreciated the guise of privacy, though.

  ‘I wish I could see Dokun without him seeing me. I want to know if he’s just a walking act or if this is truly his persona. What if he isn’t the monster we all think him to be?’

  “It’s true, we have inconclusive hearsay from everyone, but the only real facts are what you saw with your own eyes. I know we should wait to tell the others we’ve retrieved the frame, but perhaps a bit of unscheduled subterfuge is in order?�
�

  I grumbled. ‘I can’t wait to hear Woong-ji’s berating on acting rashly.’

  “If we get good intel, maybe they’ll gloss over the whole part where we acted without their approval,” Mae said with a wink.

  I smirked, then jumped into the air shaft. ‘Let’s get some more insight.’

  I reentered our room quietly to see Ko-nah already snuggled in, snoring softly.

  Genta sat up on his bedroll. “Have anything you want to tell me?”

  I shifted my robes to obscure the outline of the picture frame. “My excrement was very solid. I may be dehydrated.”

  Genta furrowed his brow then rolled over, murmuring, “Idiot.”

  I returned to my bed and waited for Mae to report they were all sleeping—save Ko-nah, since we could never tell when he was truly sleeping. I sent a trickle of ma munje to the frame and activated the first lock of thirty with a sigh. It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter 28

  TWO HOURS LATER, THE final lock on the incognito machina I’d named Thespra came free. My munje flowed through the machina like a broken dam across a rice field. I rotated, pulled, and slid pieces into place until the eight-legged, long-necked bot sat on my stomach under the blanket. The slender thing stood a fair forty centimeters tall and couldn’t have been excused as anything else that may have been propping up my blanket.

  I lifted the cover and spread a coating of ry munje along the bot’s exterior. With a thought, I walked Thespra out from under the covers. Her tiny, clawed feet tickled my skin, but I kept quiet.

  ‘Mae, are you sure this is going to work?’ I asked one more time, worried to be wasting the precious red munje. It required at least three times the energy cost as any other munje, which didn’t leave me with much more dinner to convert.

  “I’m ninety-nine percent positive. Maybe ninety-eight or ninety-seven. I don’t know. I’ve only seen the uw nanites in action a few times before and know about as much as you do. I do know if we don’t try this, you’ll never make it back,” she reminded me.