Everwinter: The Forerunner Archives (41 page)

"Yeah, okay," I say, struggling to my feet with Altair's help. "What happened to Jude?" The pure malice is still present in my voice.

"Gone," Altair replies. "He took off after you fell."

"Good," I say. "I
–"

I cut off. My brain feels flooded.
 

I
had a dream when I'd been unconscious.

Not a dream. A memory.

"What is it?" Altair asks. We're heading slowly toward the end of the alley now.

I shake my head.
My gods!
It was me!

"It was me," Altair I say. "It was me who betrayed my
Mother's mutation all those years ago!"

"What do you mean?" he asks, sounding genuinely bewildered. We head down the street
–mostly deserted–back toward our inn. The Winter's Solace. 

"A memory came to me while I was blacked out," I explain. "I guess all this talk about betrayal stirred it up." I hesitate, emotional. "I was just a kid, five years old. I was in school and the teacher was asking us about the True Body Plan. Altair, I let it slip that Ursa only has four toenails. I was so young and I didn't understand our religion yet. I totally forgot about it..." My chest hitches and a tear escapes my eye.

"My gods," Altair says, almost whispering. "I'm... I'm so sorry, Juno."

"Me too," I admit. I dwell on it some more. "My
Mother wasn't Judged until I was nine though. It took almost four years for the truth to come out fully." I stare at him. “You know all this already though, don’t you?”

Altair nods reluctantly. "Yes. Your Father told me. When the truth became known, the few who knew were
afraid to reveal it, with your Father being the High Deacon, the most powerful man in Krakelyn. They had to prove it absolutely before going public. They had to figure out what your Father knew first."

I nod my agreeme
nt. "Yeah, that makes sense." We turn left down a side street. "I still... I just can't believe it! I feel so bad! I wonder if Ursa knows?"

"If she does, I'm sure she doesn't blame you," Altair soothes.

"I hope so," I reply.

We keep moving

I'm lost now, but Altair expertly navigates the snowy streets, bringing us quickly back to the Winter's Solace. 

"You don't think the Deacons knew where we were staying, do you?" I ask as we approach the entrance
–a wide tunnel carved into the snowpack. 

"No," Altair replies. "They didn't even know we were in Everwinter when they found us. That was just a fluke, I think."

"I hate flukes," I say.

We step out of the cold eternal night and into the yellow warmth of the inn's common room. It's fairly late now, and most of the inn's patrons have turned in for the night. A fe
w still mill about the tables though, drowning in their ales. The innkeeper, a large fat man whom I never caught the name of, nods at us as we head past the bar and up the stairs to the second floor. We reach the top and quietly stalk to our room at the far end.

Altair stops when we get to the door.

It sits open a crack.

We'd told Ursa to keep it closed and locked.

Altair produces his throwing stars and pushes the door wide, keeping hidden behind the jamb.

There's a body on the floor before the hearth, face down. A famil
iar looking dart sticks from the right shoulder blade.

"Ursa!" I cry.

We burst into the room–a single enclosed space with two beds. There's nowhere for an intruder to hide.

Ursa is alone.

Where's Traylor?

"Ursa!" I yell, on my knees next to my unconscious
Mother. I pull the dart from her back. "Ursa!"No response.

"Here," Altair says, crouching next to me. He runs his hands along Ursa's neck, feeling the muscles under the skin. He finds what he's looking for and squeezes, pinching hard.

Ursa gasps, her eyes popping wide.

She rolls over, staring at us in disbelief. "Where is he!" she practically screams. "Where is he?"

"Who?" I ask stupidly, just trying to keep the woman from sensory overload.

"Traylor!" she blurts. "He... He took him!"

"Jude?" I ask, knowing the answer already.

Ursa scowls, baring her teeth and nodding her head. "I'm gonna bloody kill him!"

59.

"Are you sure about this?" I ask, craning my neck straight up.

The deck of the hulking ship above us is invisible, co
vered by low hanging clouds and roiling, falling snow. I can't actually tell how big the thing is. The metal is all rusted and black; it's a wonder it floats at all. I can
just
make out a name on the bow, three letters:
XON
. A biting wind blows in off the open sea, and I just can't believe there's actually water in Everwinter that
isn't
frozen. Of course, I'm familiar with saltwater–Krakelyn is on the Northern Ocean, after all–but I never once considered that it could be immune to freezing temperatures like this.

"I could probably walk faster than this thing can sail," I finish.

Altair rolls his eyes at me. "You'll find out soon enough," he replies. "If Traylor really has been taken to the Evernight Skytower, this is our fastest, most direct route. It's at least a hundred clicks from here to the Stockton District." He pauses, staring at the ship. "I don't know how Jude is travelling, but if he doesn't have a vehicle of some sort, there's a chance we could beat him there."

"With the way things have been going lately?
” I scoff. “Not likely. He's probably already there and Traylor is probably driving him nuts." I laugh. "Hopefully he brought enough tranquilizer to keep the kid sedated." Altair laughs too, but it's uncomfortable. I'm trying to make light of the situation, but it's not working very well. 

I'm worried sick about Traylor.
 

There's just no way my
Father sent Jude here.

No way.

My Father is dead.

He probably
did
flee Krakelyn as the Deacons claimed, but there's no way he made it all the way to Everwinter. Not alone. Hells, we barely made it here with four of us!

So what's Jude's angle then?

He's still working for the Children of Mutanity
, I assume with a horrified shiver.

"Got them!" a familiar voice calls out behind us.

We whirl about to see Ursa trudging through the snow, a huge smile plastered across her still healing face. It's the first time I've seen her happy since Traylor was taken. I expected her to be wracked with guilt over it but, impressively, her anger toward Jude has kept her focused. She wants her son back and is willing to do anything for it.

"Awesome!" I exclaim, taking the thick paper tickets she's holding out to me; our proof of passage to board the Xon.

With little in the way of money or goods to trade, Altair had had to give up one of his throwing stars in exchange for a chunk of coin at a local bazaar. He'd been reluctant, but there was no other choice. How many of those things does he have anyway?

He never seems to run out.

"We set sail in an hour," Ursa announces. "So unless there's something else we need to do," she looks at Altair, "we might as well get on board."

Altair shakes his head, looking about warily. He's been paranoid since we were attacked by the Deacons.

Not that I blame him.

"Nope. Let's go," he gestures.

We shamble through the slowly drifting snow toward the center of the massive ship. I can just barely make out the loading platform from where we are. A low rumble sounds out of the dark and a dim light suddenly appears from between a pair of snow mounded buildings. It's an oil fired vehicle, skittering toward us on a pair of skis and a set of tracks that propel it effortlessly through the snow. My jaw is on the ground at the sight of such a marvelous contraption. Altair and Ursa, however, seem to take it as nothing special. I guess they've seen snow machines during their previous trips to Everwinter.

The machine zooms by, the driver
–a hulking Everwinter mutant–revving the engine as he passes us. I cough in the wake of his exhaust. "
Awesome
," I whisper hoarsely.

We reach the boarding platform and there's a bit of a l
ine so we queue up. A pair of Everwinter mutants stands on either side of the platform, checking and taking tickets. This ship must sail often if so many people use it. My doubts about this method of transport are slowly dwindling.

We finally reach the head of the queue and I hand our tickets to the mutants. We're all bundled
, head to toe as usual, but the mutants pay it no heed. They rip our tickets, handing me the stubs, and let us aboard. The platform is a rickety wooden thing, and there's a lot of people on it. My anxiety is gonna be on the rise until we get safely to the top.

On deck, the first thing
we notice is how windy it is. The ship had been acting as a windbreaker on the ground, but now that we're above it, we're getting the full force of the wind off the sea. The snow whips and stings my eyes where they're exposed. The deck itself is a massive metal area, dotted here and there by vents and other protuberances that I can only guess at. A huge square structure that looks like a full scale building sits at the stern. Other passengers mill about. My attention is quickly drawn to a loud
THWAP!
sound from above us. It reminds me of laundry drying on a line on a blustery day back home.

I look upward.

A gargantuan mast, wider than a house, shoots straight up into the night, the top lost to darkness and snow. Attached to the mast is an equally massive sheet, tossing lightly in the wind. There are multiple sheets attached to the mast. I turn and look toward the bow of the ship and see two more masts of comparable size, each with their own sails.

Sails!

"This is a sailboat?" I ask, baffled.

Altair grins at me. "I told you this would be the fastest way to get to Stockton."

I shake my head, studying the masts. "These have been
added
to the ship though," I say. "This wasn't always a sailer, was it?"

"No," Altair confirms. "At best guest, this was a Forerunner ship powered by oil fired engines. They used it to t
ransport things. Even oil itself."

My
eyes go wide. "No way! There's no engine in the world that could move something like this!"

Ursa comes up beside me. "Hard to believe, I know," she says, "but it's true. Just another wonder of the Forerunners."
 

I gape. All of
Krakelyn could probably fit onto this ship!

"We sho
uld get below," Altair suggests, "before we freeze our limbs off."

I couldn't agree more
–I'm frozen–but I can't hold back my enthusiasm. "Can we check out the bow first?" I ask. 

Altair shakes his head in annoyance but Ursa just laughs. "Come on. We'll make it quick."

As we head toward the bow, I'm overcome with a wave of anxiety and sadness.

"Traylor would have loved this," I say.

"I know," Ursa agrees. "Don't worry, Juno, we'll get him back."

"I just don't understand why Jude took him," I groan, contemplating. "The only thing that makes sense to me is that he's still working
for the Children of Mutanity. But that doesn't fit either. The Children wanted me dead. They were obsessed with it. If they found out about Traylor, Jude would have simply killed me and not bothered with kidnapping Traylor. It just doesn't make sense."

"That's why I don't think Traylor
's in any danger," Ursa says. "I believe Jude was telling the truth when he said he isn't a Child anymore. This is something else going on here, Juno. We just don't know what yet."

"Yeah," I agree with a guilty nod.

I haven't told Ursa Jude's claim about my Father yet. I don't see the point. I still don't believe Jude was sent by him, and neither does Altair. Altair agrees with me that my Father is in all likelihood dead. I did tell Ursa, however, that Jude warned us not to go to the lab, and that the Deacons know about the Box causing the mutations. 

That had made Ursa very curious.

"The Evernight Skytower is in Stockton," Ursa says, changing the subject. "Altair thinks it will take us a day or so to get there."

"Yeah, he told me when you were buying the tickets," I explain. I hesitate. We're almost at the bow of the ship now, the wind whipping us harder than ever. "Why do you think Jude told us not to bother going to your lab?"

Ursa considers a moment. "The conspiracy minded part of me wants to think that there's something there he doesn't want us to see," she replies. She shrugs. "On the other hand, in all likelihood, there's nothing left of the place. It's been almost a decade since I left it. I mean, we sealed the place up after decommissioning, so there's a good chance it collapsed under the weight of the snow. That happens sometimes."