“Foreign meaning raknoth?”
She hesitated. “Well, technically, we haven’t confirmed that. But it seems quite likely, yes.”
“So they are basically turning into full raknoth as they age?”
“In a way, perhaps. But not in the way you may be thinking.” She tapped at her lips with a forefinger, as if wondering how to explain. “The true raknoth are discrete beings that invade a host and take control, yes?”
I nodded.
“Right. Well, while the relationship between raknoth and host clearly isn’t symbiotic,” she said, “it seems the raknoth at least strike some balance with their hosts’ bodies, modifying and altering without completely smothering what was there to begin with. Based on what we’re seeing from these hybrid samples, I’m starting to suspect they lack that crucial aspect of balance. Their raknoth side might be more like a cancer than a sentient being. If my work at Vantage was any indication, it might just keep growing until it smothers every human cell in the body.”
“What does that mean?”
“I can’t say for sure. But, if that’s indeed what’s happening, given what I’ve seen studying their tissues in the past, I’m going to guess that a fully developed hybrid will require a tremendous amount of human blood to survive.”
“And meanwhile, they’ll just keep getting stronger.”
She turned her palms up. “Possibly. It’s also possible there could be an inflection point where they start to weaken if the blood demands grow too high. We’re doing our best to develop a workable model from what little data we have. There are a lot of complications. For instance, it’s possible the daily average volume of blood consumption might alter the rate of development. A hybrid who feeds more frequently or in higher volumes may transition more slowly. We have no idea, really. We just need more data.”
“Well,” I said, “guess it’s a good thing we’ve got the best in the world working on it, then.”
Therese blushed, waving away any intended compliment. Franco just smiled.
“Plus,” Elise said, “who knows, maybe the hybrids outgrow their feeding capacity and their entire army ends up just croaking overnight.”
“That,” I said, “or we find ourselves facing five raknoth and an army that requires a few small cities’ worth of blood a day.”
“Or that,” Therese agreed quietly, ushering in a silence far more somber than the last one.
“This is why we can’t take you places, broto,” Johnny said.
I shrugged. “Just saying.”
“We’ll all keep doing our jobs,” Franco said. “It’s all we can do.” He gestured toward us. “Check what I sent you. I’ll be over soon to discuss it.”
With all the commotion and the talk of hybrids, I’d nearly forgotten about Franco’s mysterious finding. We all said our goodbyes, and I ended the call and eagerly turned to Elise, who was already back at work, sifting through folders and tapping commands into the custom application I’d seen her and her father use a couple times for sensitive data transfers over the lights.
Finally, the file in question popped open. Some kind of personnel file. A full blown official citizen registry file, I realized. The kind that wasn’t supposed to be accessible to the general public. And while the picture ID was probably at least a decade out of date, the longer I stared, the more certain I was.
It was Hawk Nose.
Franco had found him. But that realization wasn’t as shocking as the name listed on the citizen registry file.
Burton Kovaks.
“You were kidnapped by Andre Kovaks’ brother?” Elise finally asked.
I waved helplessly at the file, unsure what to say, too busy remembering the night I’d watched Andre Kovaks hanged in the Great Hall for his blasphemy and his multiple crimes against the Vantage Corporation. It had been my last night full night with my parents—the last night I’d slept in my own bed in Sanctuary, certain that, uneasy doubts or not, I was bound for a long life of Legion service.
“Was he one of them?” Elise asked. “One of these Emmútari record keepers? Is this some sacred familial tradition or something?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head, which was threatening to overflow with those questions and a thousand more like them.
Franco couldn’t get here soon enough, I decided—though, at the same time, I knew he wouldn’t have concrete answers to these questions. All I really knew was that I still had a telepathic cloaking problem to solve, and even more questions now than I’d had fifteen minutes earlier.
I turned my own cloaking pendant over in my fingers, looking between it and the somber-faced image of a younger Burton Kovaks, mind whirling around, and around, and around.
And so the endless stream flowed on.
Spurred by cheerful thoughts of Kovaks family trees and hybrid armies growing city-sized appetites, the next few days passed like a sandcloth over chaffed skin. Another round of civilian abductions came and went with a feeling of frightening routineness around Haven. Not that I was allowed to leave the apartment to see, or anything. I just gathered as much from my friends and from the reels.
I also gathered from the reels that, despite the fresh round of attacks and the increasingly clear picture of a war slipping out of control, reel coverage of my demonly episode in Humility somehow only seemed to be gaining traction instead of fading away as it should have. That was a problem, but there wasn’t really anything I could do about it, sequestered as I was. Instead, I did my best to follow Glenbark’s wishes, keep my head down, and crack the cloaking rune problem.
It was just that my best wasn’t good enough.
Worse, despite Franco’s discovery, the odds of our getting help from the Emmútari texts still seemed about thin as optical shroud film. Franco agreed that Andre Kovaks had likely been involved with the remnants of the Emmútari. In fact, that assumption, made de novo from the odd circumstances of Andre’s arrest at Vantage and the unique level of knowledge that’d been contained in his publicly released logs, had been what had led Franco to check the Kovaks family connections and find Burton in the first place.
But finding his name hadn’t landed them any closer to finding the man himself. Franco was doing his best, of course, and Glenbark had agreed to put out a planetwide alert for Burton Kovaks’ capture, but that was going to take time—if it even paid off at all. Meanwhile, they were busy in Therese’s lab, hatching a system for identifying likely locations of undercover hybrid breeding facilities.
Maddening as it was to not be able to simply walk out the door and go visit—or even to just take a stroll and clear my head—my aching legs didn’t much lament the chance to remain on floor or couch, unburdened by locomotion. My antics in Humility had taken a heavy toll.
That said, I gladly would’ve paid that toll again three times over for some kind of break with the confounded runes. I’d spent so much time staring at them that they were still there when I closed my eyes—still there when I slept, taunting me throughout the fitful nights.
The only bright side through all of it was Elise.
We trained. We talked. We worked on solving the mystery of the runes. And when it was all too much and our eyes met just so, we took the kind of breaks that only two teenagers locked in an apartment together could take.
It was during one of these breaks that Elise took me by the hand and led me into the bedroom, telling me she had a special surprise for me. I’d like to say I played it cool, but mostly, I followed like a hungry hound. There may have even been slobber.
“What did I do to deserve a surprise?” I asked, as she guided me to the corner of the bed and pushed me down onto it.
She gave me a smile that would’ve left me weak at the knees if I hadn’t already been sitting. “You don’t know what day it is,” she said softly, sliding down to her knees in front of me, “do you?”
My body was already responding to her “Uh…”
What day was it?
I couldn’t think of anything but her
hand sliding up my thigh, and her head dipping closer to my tightening She shot me a wink, dipping lower… and pulled a small dark box out from under the bed before leaning back to offer it to me with a brilliant smile.
“Happy birthday, flyboy.”
“Holy scud,” I muttered, absentmindedly laying a hand over my thundering heart. Had I honestly forgotten my own eighteenth birthday? “I… thanks, Lise. Can’t believe it’s already…”
Her smile only widened, and she forced the box into my hand. “Open it.”
I studied her face for a moment, drinking in her infectious smile, then I did as she said, flipping open the dark lid with growing anticipation. My breath caught—a thousand different memories and emotions flashing through me all at once.
It was my dad’s pendant. The very same darkened silver sigil of Alpha he’d worn at his breast every single day of his life. I would’ve recognized it anywhere.
I looked dumbly at Elise, who was watching me with an expression teetering between concerned and hopeful.
“Johnny managed to pull it from records. Apparently it was one of the few things that survived the fire. We thought you should have it.”
I stared at the silver pendant in my hands. Turned it over to the back side, which had clearly been polished, but not enough to completely hide the charred evidence of the fire it had seen.
Elise’s face fell. “Is it… too much?”
“I… No,” I croaked, finally finding my voice. “No, Lise, it’s… It’s perfect.”
She leaned in close, cupping her hands to the back of my head. “Are you sure? Because it kinda looks like you’re gonna cry.”
“I’m not gonna cry,” I said as the moisture brimmed dangerously in my eyes.
She pulled me in for a deep, lingering kiss that ended with few quick pecks on the cheeks and nose. “I love you, Haldin Raish.”
“Dammit,” I whispered as a single tear spilled over. “I guess that means I love you too, Elise Fields.”
“Well that’s good to know,” she said, rising from her knees and leaning in with a satisfied smile. “Because the rest of the surprise comes later,” she whispered in my ear before standing back up and pulling me to my feet. “After cake.”
I sniffed and cleared my throat, an odd mixture of sadness, tender emotion, and animalistic arousal all warring in my body. “Cake?”
But she just backed to the closed bedroom door, beckoning with a single finger and a mischievous smile.
“You didn’t,” I said, wiping my eyes and pulling my dad’s pendant on as I went to join her.
She just shrugged and gestured to the door. I pulled it open, and there were Johnny, Franco, James, and Phineas, all standing there waiting.
“Surprise!” called James.
“I thought we weren’t doing the surprise thing,” Johnny said.
“I got excited,” James said, looking embarrassed.
Franco brandished a small cake, smiling. “I know it’s hard to think of celebrating anything in times like these, but we just wanted to remind you that we’re here for you and that we’re all going to come through this thing together. Happy birthday, Haldin.”
“And may Alpha grant a thousand blessings on your cursed ass,” Johnny added, clapping an arm around Phineas’ shoulders and then immediately rethinking the move.
I just looked from Elise’s shining smile to the rest of them, all watching me, all of them radiating caring warmth—or at least mild fondness, in Phineas’ case. It was the love of a family, and it pulsed through me as I stepped into the room, pretty sure I’d been overly optimistic with my promise that I wouldn’t cry.
Then my palmlight buzzed.
I thought little of it—didn’t even consciously intend to check it. But my damned fingers reflexively uncurled, and once my eyes flicked over the message info, I couldn’t look away.
It was a full message, with a title line and everything: A Peaceful Request. And below that, in the ID line: The Sanctum of Alpha.
Just like that, the magical warmth of that moment evaporated. Someone might’ve said something back in the room, but I wasn’t there anymore. My world had condensed in on that single line.
Since when did the entire establishment of the Sanctum send private messages to Haldin Raish?
The message wasn’t extremely long, but I skipped it anyway, scrolling straight to the signature with a sinking suspicion. And there it was, signed in some fancy tailored digiscript, right next to the sigil of Alpha.
Servant of the Almighty Alpha, and High Cleric of the Sanctum.
“The High Cleric,” I muttered to myself.
I looked up and was almost surprised to find my friends all staring at me.
“The High Cleric sent me a message.” My tone sounded flat and dumb to my ears.
They all looked as dumbfounded as I felt. All of them but Franco, who pressed the cake into James’ hands and stepped forward. “What does it say?”
I scrolled to the top of the message and started reading, only barely comprehending through the mental haze. I reached the bottom and held the palmlight out to Franco, needing him to tell me that I was actually seeing what I thought I was.
“What does it say?” Elise asked beside me, watching her dad’s face with frightened eyes.
I felt dizzy, my head whirling with all of it—the scudstorm of the past cycle, the implications of receiving this message now, mere days after an unidentified telepath had tried to murder me in my sleep.
“The High Cleric peacefully requests Haldin’s presence at the White Tower,” Franco said slowly, holding my wrist as he scanned through the message once more, just to be sure. “He wants him there tomorrow at noon.”
Turned out, I had read it right, spinning head and all.
Happy birthday to me.
25
Old Wounds
“Remind me again why this isn’t the worst idea ever,” I muttered to Johnny, keeping my eyes ahead on the gleaming tower that utterly dwarfed the descending transport’s front viewport. The White Tower.
“High General says so?” Johnny replied in an equally hushed tone.
“She also said I was on house arrest,” I grumbled. “What happened to that?”
The transport touched down with an easy jostle, and Ordo Dillard leapt straight to it, issuing orders to First Squad with precision. I’d always thought he was a good ordo, but today he was perfect—his stance crisp, the authority in his voice absolute. First Squad snapped to his commands with a discipline that would’ve made Mathis proud, disembarking to form a perimeter in pristine order.
That’s what happened when the High General of the Legion came for a ride-along with your squad.
Glenbark stood from the seat ahead of us, paying little outward attention to the disciplined display around us and instead turning to fix me with a look that let me know our comments hadn’t gone unheard. She was especially decorated and composed today—the High General of the Legion, in all her calm fury and decorum. She even had her ceremonial sword belted on.
Her stare made me want to squirm.
“It isn’t the worst idea ever,” she said, leaning in close enough that only we would hear, “because the only alternative you’ve left me with, Citizen Raish, is to deny the invitation of the High Cleric himself and invite war with the Sanctum and open rebellion from half my generals. Our coming here today—your playing nice in there today—might be the only thing that changes that.” She favored Johnny with an approving look and the faintest ghost of a smile. “Plus, I say so.”
Demons below, was he starting to rub off on her?
Given that we were about to meet the man whose predecessor had tried to execute me a few short cycles ago, I sure hoped not. Especially since the last High Cleric had only wanted to kill me because he’d been a raknoth and I’d been screwing with their plans. He probably hadn’t given a damn that Carlisle and I were Shapers or demons or whatever else they wanted to call us. The new High Cleric clearly did.
And lo
oking out at the crowd of spectators amassing around our perimeter and the front courtyard of the White Tower, I wasn’t even sure I could blame him.
My existence was becoming a public disturbance.
“I should’ve listen to Lise and given Barbara that interview when I had the chance,” I said, mostly to myself.
Johnny patted my shoulder. “Hey, at least you two got one last good swive in, right? Plus, cake.”
Glenbark and I both turned frowns on him.
He shrugged. “What? Tell me that’s not worth something.”
Glenbark turned back to me. “You’re not dying today, Raish. Certainly not before I have my cloaks, and preferably not until long after.” She started to turn away, then paused as if remembering something. “And for the record,” she added, “you’re still on house arrest.”
I wanted to say something smart and sarcastic about just how evident and touching her concern was, but I held it in, thinking diplomatic thoughts. Play nice. That was the theme of the day. Play nice with the High Cleric who may or may not have already signed my execution order.
This was a mistake.
But Glenbark was already waving us toward the transport’s exits, busy checking in over the battle channel with the other ordos in our escort detail. Johnny was taking his feet, offering me a hand up.
I was already here.
It was already done.
All I could do was stick to the plan.
What plan? whispered a voice in the back of my mind.
Stepping back into the streets of Divinity—or the grand courtyard of the White Tower, as it were—felt wrong, somehow. Foreign. Not that it had actually been that long since I’d been in the city. It hadn’t even been a full cycle since Johnny and Mathis had come to our cramped little Legion hideaway. It was just that I felt out of place in the sprawling city, under the gleaming majesty of its towers.
Under the watchful eye of its people.
There were hundreds of them along the edges of the expansive courtyard. Thousands, maybe. More pouring in by the second, staring and pointing and animatedly chatting back and forth. Too many people watching our meager detail of three Legion companies marching for the might of the White Tower.
Demons of Divinity Page 26