Horizon (26 page)

Hoku watched Aluna’s next set, too, marveling at how sharklike her movements were; how crisp and sharp, even in the thick water surrounding her torso and tail. She was utterly beautiful. He told Zorro to record her, though he wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe with everything happening, he wanted to be sure to capture this one moment forever.

When his Datastreamers buzzed, he almost didn’t answer, not wanting to miss even one of Aluna’s twists or attacks. But Zorro nibbled his finger, and he relented. Instead of Rollin’s familiar face, Nathif’s sleek cheekbones and slitted snake eyes appeared before him.

“Hoku, are you there? Rollin says you wanted to talk to me,” Nathif said. His lips curled up at the corners. “I am not surprised that you miss me, of course. I frequently have that effect on people.”

Hoku grinned and rolled his eyes before activating the device on his force shield. “I’m here,” he said, “and although I do occasionally miss your bizarre sense of humor, Aluna is the one who wants to talk to you.”

He waved, trying to catch Aluna’s attention. She stopped mid-spin and swam toward him immediately.

Hoku sent the comm feed to Zorro and asked him to project it for Aluna. Nathif’s face appeared in the water, wobbling slightly in the current. Hoku issued a few commands to the comm device, increasing its range and the direction of the camera to encompass Aluna.

And then he watched and listened, his heart slowly constricting in his chest as Aluna told Nathif about Dash.

All traces of mischief melted from Nathif’s face. The pupils of his snake eyes widened. His nose flared. The muscles in his neck tightened. And when Aluna finished the story, Nathif’s voice came over the comm device, soft as sand.

“We do not know if he lives?”

“We do not,” Aluna said, her own voice strained. “But Vachir is with him, and I will act as if they’re both alive until I have proof of anything else.”

Nathif lowered his head for a moment. When he raised it again, he had recovered himself slightly. “Thank you for telling me.”

Aluna reached out and touched the hovering image, sending ripples through Nathif’s face.

The second after Nathif signed off and Zorro’s eyes fell dim, Hoku looked at Aluna. She treaded water, staring at the place where Nathif had been, her fingers splayed as if she were fighting the urge to ball them into fists.

Hoku touched her arm and she crumbled, a mighty fortress of sand that only needed one small lap of water for permission to collapse. He pulled her into his arms and held her while she sobbed in great choking gasps, her strong body racked with the weight of so much worry.

Hoku said nothing. There were no words better than wrapping his arms around her back and resting his cheek against her short, wild hair.

His comm device buzzed, indicating an incoming message. Aluna jerked away and wiped the tears from her eyes, a habit from the Above World that was completely unnecessary underwater.

“Who is it?” she said.

He accessed the message’s location. “Pocket,” he said, and asked Zorro to once again display the video. He couldn’t help smiling just a little as Pocket’s face and horns popped into view.

“Hoku, Aluna,” Pocket said. “Why is the picture all blurry and dim?”

“We’re underwater,” Hoku answered. “The camera was built for this, so it pulls in as much light as it can, but the picture will never be as clear as it is when there’s no refraction —”

“Save the science lesson for later,” Aluna snapped. “Have you found them, Pocket? Have you found Dash and Vachir?”

“Still have Dash’s signal, though it went all fizzly for a while,” Pocket said. “Far as we can tell, he’s been in one place for more than half a day now. Don’t know about the horse. Mags figures Dash is . . . where he’s gonna stay for a while.”

Or maybe he’s not moving because he’s dead
, Hoku thought, but he didn’t dare say that out loud.

“Did Squirrel follow them?” Hoku asked.

Pocket nodded. “She did good. Stayed hidden all the way into the mountains, so now we know where the opening to the tunnel starts.”

“Do you have coordinates for that? If Squirrel noted the time when Dash passed into the tunnel, then I can search the homing beacon’s data and find his location at exactly that time,” Hoku said.

“Just what I was thinking,” Aluna grumbled, but she looked a little awed, too.

“Squirrel said the sun was just starting to slide behind the sea,” Pocket said.

Hoku grunted and accessed a data set of scientif ically calculated sunset times, then cross-referenced it with Squirrel’s location and the data from the homing beacon. “I’ve got it!” he said. “I’ve got the entrance point!”

“Can you figure my coordinates, too?” Pocket asked. “We’re staying here. Any folk come by who want to go in after Dash and Vachir, they should come talk to us. Send us a message on this frequency, and as long as we’re still breathing, we’ll find them. Odd says he’s got some swords that belong to Dash, and he wants to give them back himself.”

Hoku saw Aluna’s face start to contort again, and he moved the camera away from her. “Yes, I’ve just accessed your location and will transmit it to our allies along with the other information. Pocket, you did really well. Aluna and I thank you.”

Pocket shrugged. “Nothing to thank. Kludge watches out for its own.”

When they hung up, Aluna grabbed his arm. She’d fended off the tears this time, and her eyes held their familiar ferocity.

“How far inland is the tunnel?” she asked.

Hoku pulled up a map and had Zorro project it. He overlaid the new coordinates, putting big red dots to indicate Pocket’s location, the entrance to Strand’s secret tunnel, and Dash’s final position inside the mountain.

Aluna groaned. “That’s too far. It’s going to take us weeks to get there. Not to mention the mountainside will be swarming with Upgraders.” She looked down at her shimmering, fluid tail and scowled. “I never should have swallowed the Ocean Seed.”

Hoku stared at the map, a thought itching at the back of his mind. The map looked familiar, but why? He accessed the data from Seahorse Alpha and started throwing other dots on the map: Seahorse Alpha, the City of Shifting Tides, the HydroTek dome, the house that Karl Strand and Sarah Jennings used to live in . . .

“Stop!” Aluna said. “What is that dot? The one you just put up?”

He tossed up a label:
465 EAST RIVER AVENUE, ARCADIA, CA.
The words were meaningless to him. How did the ancients find anything by using strings of nonsensical words?

“Wait, this map isn’t right,” Hoku said. “This is from ancient times, when the sea level was much lower. Hold on a flash.” He asked the computer at Seahorse Alpha to estimate how much land the ocean had eaten over the centuries, and he watched, fascinated, as the map changed. Huge areas marked as cities fell quickly to the water, until everything along the shore that was not a mountain had been subsumed.

“The dot is underwater now,” Aluna said. “The place where Karl Strand and Sarah Jennings used to live got swallowed up by the ocean.”

“Dash is close to where they lived, but inside the mountain,” Hoku said.

Aluna shook her head. “It can’t be a coincidence. Karl Strand would not have
accidentally
built his lair near his ancient home.”

“We’ve got to go there,” Hoku said. “We can swim and be there in a few days, if we swim hard. Maybe there’s some way into the lair from his home.”

Aluna pulled him into a hug, but this time, she wasn’t crying. When she released him, she looked like herself again — the Aluna he hadn’t seen since the desert, before her defeat in the Thunder Trials.

She smiled and said, “It’s time to meet Karl Strand.”

C
ALLI STARED AT THE BATTLE MAP
and tried to find answers amid chaos. But war was nothing like science. She couldn’t learn formulas, conduct experiments, or rely on matter and energy to act the way she predicted. There was no simple and elegant solution.

No, strategy and tactics had consequences that dripped with blood and heartache. Even when she sent a dozen loyal soldiers to their deaths, she had no way of knowing if she’d made the right choice. Every lost life felt wrong.

And Dash and Vachir. She couldn’t stop thinking about them. Hoku’s message had been brief, and the woman who’d delivered it had clearly not recognized its importance: “Dash and Vachir captured by Scorch. Should have Strand’s location soon.”

Senator Niobe joined her. “Are you feeling unwell, President?”

“What?” Calli said, rubbing her eyes. “No, I’m fine.”

Her eyes burned from exhaustion and her wings drooped behind her, almost dragging on the floor. If she’d had five minutes to herself, she would have curled up on one of the war tables and closed her eyes. Sleep never came — not once for more than an hour since she’d arrived home — but even the pretense of sleep would be welcome.

“Did we hear from President Minerva yet?” Calli asked.

Niobe nodded. “Zarek, the president’s consort, answered their comm this morning. He said our refugees will be welcome at Talon’s Peak. Minerva will send a squadron of her warriors to meet us halfway. We need only tell her when.”

“Good,” Calli said. “Make arrangements for the sick and wounded to begin the journey as soon as possible.”

“Including your mother?” Niobe asked gently.

“Yes,” Calli said.

Niobe frowned. “High Senator Electra won’t like that.”

“And I should care what she thinks?” Calli asked. “Iolanthe is my mother, Skyfeather’s Landing is my responsibility, and this is my call.”

Niobe stiffened. “Yes, President Calliope.”

Calli regretted her tone — Niobe had been nothing but supportive during all of this — but she didn’t have the energy to apologize. “And tell Hypatia to report to me. We’re losing too many along the eastern rim.”

“As you wish,” Niobe said. She turned to leave and almost collided with a young Aviar rushing into the war room.

“President Calliope!” the girl gasped. “The comm room. Hoku. It’s urgent.”

Calli strode past the girl, remembering at the last second to turn her body so her wings didn’t smack the girl in the face. “Follow and tell me everything,” she said.

The girl — who might have been a year or two older than Calli — scrambled to catch up.

“Hoku said they have a location for Dash, and they think he might be close to Strand’s base of operations,” she said.

“Are Dash and Vachir alive?”

The girl blushed. “I . . . I didn’t think to ask.”

Calli bit back her response. She had forgotten that Dash and Vachir meant nothing to her people. They were not leaders of splinter groups, not powerful warriors, not great scientists. She could never explain
why
they were so important, could only keep repeating that they were.

“Wait outside until I’m done.” Calli swept into the room and sat on the lone chair in front of the comm wall. Hoku was on the screen, gnawing on his lip, his image blurry from the water.

And his eyes . . . there was something wrong with his eyes.

“Calli!” Hoku said, his expression shifting from nervous to excited as soon as he saw her. “I don’t have long. I’m going to transmit a series of coordinates to your computer.”

She watched the data come in and was relieved when her brain parsed it without effort. This is where she belonged, amid beautiful strings of numbers, not studying battle formations.

“The tunnel entrance leads down to Strand?” she asked.

“It leads to Dash, and hopefully Vachir is still with him,” he said. “We think Strand might be there, too. See this other point I’ve marked? It’s underwater now, but Strand used to live there back when he was an ancient Human.”

“That’s too perfect to be a coincidence,” Calli said.

“Aluna and I agree,” Hoku said. “The Serpenti and Equians are headed toward the mountain tunnel. Rollin even convinced some Upgraders to join our side. The bulk of our allies are going to engage Strand’s forces near the mountain while a small team tries to sneak into the tunnel. I told them you’d send Aviars, too.”

“What? Why did you say that?” She felt heat rise to her cheeks and anger fly to the surface of her brain. She didn’t try to stop it. There he was, safe underwater, while her people were dying all around her. “We’re losing the war here, Hoku. We’re outnumbered and our people are being slaughtered! I can’t spare warriors for an assault on Strand. We’re doing everything we can just to save Skyfeather’s Landing!”

Hoku pulled back, away from the camera, apparently trying to distance himself from her assault. The action only fueled her rage. She yelled, “And why are your eyes orange?”

“Calli, I —”

“No, wait.” She held up her hand to the camera and bowed her head.
Breathe
, she told herself.
You’re tired. You’re worried. You’re angry . . . but none of those things are Hoku’s fault.
When she lifted her head again, she felt reasonably confident that logic once again ruled her thought processes.

“I’m sorry, Hoku, I really am,” Calli said. “We just don’t have any warriors to spare.”

Hoku pulled the camera closer. “Not even for Dash and Vachir?”

Calli winced. Hoku must have known she would. “I’d risk my life for them,” she said. “But everything is different now. It’s not about my life anymore, or what I want. Thousands of lives depend on me. My people need me, and I have to do what’s right for them, not for myself.”