The Last of the Ageless (39 page)

The Advisor blinked rapidly, as though genuinely struggling to hold back tears.

Soledad reached out as though to shake her, but then put her hands down. “Let me tell them, then.” She gripped the bar with both hands, as if to keep from strangling her fellow Ageless. “Before any more names get added to that list. Like your friend Gryid.”

Kaia smiled. “His beacon is back. I thought he’d been killed too… I couldn’t see his beacon or contact him. But he’s safe now.”

“And I’ll bet you warned him, didn’t you? The others deserve the same chance.”

“I always knew everyone’s locations, but I didn’t want to contact them because of the Prophet’s Mandate.” Kaia spun on her heel, gesturing at the empty room. “Don’t you remember what happened here?”

“There were plenty of lectures about the K’inTesh here. Which one do you mean?” Soledad’s voice betrayed her rising annoyance.

Korreth hoped she wouldn’t do anything stupid. Despite the amazing work Kaia’s Ancient machines had done, Jorrim still needed time to heal.

“The last time. The most important lecture of all.” Kaia’s eyes lit up with a zealot’s faith, making Korreth shiver. “The Prophet told us what we must do to keep the world from ever suffering another Catastrophe.”

“You know what I think?” Soledad stepped in front of Kaia, cutting off her line of sight to whatever memories she imagined. “If I hadn’t told you what happened to Rollick, you wouldn’t have told me about any of this. You’re lying. Or hiding something. What’s really stopping you from telling everyone that Zen’s coming to kill them?”

The Advisor’s shoulders slumped, and her years fell away, leaving her a middle-aged woman. “Because I’m the reason he’s doing it.”

“What?” Soledad pulled back.

This wasn’t what Korreth had hoped to learn. Kaia and Soledad’s conversation had taken turns he’d never expected. He was willing to bet he now knew more about the Catastrophe than any other non-Ageless in the world.

Kaia took a deep, shuddery breath. “A century or so after the Catastrophe—who knows when?—Zen’s sister Rafia was killed by her own people. As far as either of us knew, none of the other Ageless deaths up ‘til then had been murders. It broke Zen’s spirit. A few years later, there was another of us who died for her technology. A Purebred tribe conquered hers in an effort to attain her tech, and Timar was killed in the fighting. I learned of it after.”

“Pretty sure you’ve told me most of that already,” Soledad said. “What are you saying? Was Zen with the conquering tribe?”

Kaia faced Soledad, her expression resolute. “No. Zen contacted me, and I gave him my condolences. I don’t know why I told him about Timar being killed for her tech; I guess to somehow give him solace that his sister wasn’t the only one. When he learned that a second Ageless had died for her secrets, his rampage began.”

Kaia paused and then motioned with her hands as though backtracking. “You see, when he asked where Timar’s body could be found, to pay his respects, I believed him. I thought he wanted to mourn for her as he did for his sister. I was a fool. He violated the Mandate and stole what was left of her technology and notes. I watched as Seamus and Zen’s beacons approached one another. Not long after that, Seamus’s beacon went out. When I asked Zen what had happened, he stopped talking to me. That was the last time we spoke. Then Zen went after Henka and the rest.”

Soledad nodded, and although Korreth had trouble following their conversation, his mistress had put the puzzle pieces together. “And Henka possessed knowledge of cellular manipulation and… some kind of neurological information?”

Kaia gave a curt nod. “Even without my help, Zen eventually tracked her down.”

Soledad’s brow creased. “And you didn’t tell anyone else about this, even though you knew it was happening? You just let Liang and Rollick and Cerrit become his next victims?”

“Look, I decided from there on out I couldn’t be too careful in what I told the other Ageless about each other. I recognized the huge mistake I made with Zen, and I resolved not to make it again!”

“So. You think I’m no better than him.”

Kaia regarded her with a guarded expression, her eyes squinting as though trying to peer into Soledad’s inner thoughts. “I think that if I gave you their names and locations, you wouldn’t just warn them. You’d ask them to ally with you, which is strictly against the Prophet’s Mandate that we keep our technologies separate.”

Korreth understood her concern. After all, Zen also wanted an alliance, but he seemed to consider the others either with him or against him.

Kaia shook her head. “And you’d probably lead Zen straight to them anyway, whether you meant to or not.”

“You’ve been manipulating all of us all along, Kaia. You’re already in this up to your eyeballs.”

Though the tension in the room escalated, the Advisor kept her silence.

Soledad pointed at her. “So you decide whether you care if the rest of us survive, or whether you’re going to let Zen keep killing us until you’re the only one left and it’s your turn.”

Kaia raised a hand, and the world slipped into slow motion. Her palm connected with Soledad’s cheekbone, and Korreth lunged.

But Soledad said, “Wait, Korreth.”

His raised arms strained to subdue his mistress’s attacker, but the breath squeezed out of his lungs. He felt as though he were suspended in midair as the slap echoed through the open room.

“You make it sound like I wanted all of this to happen,” Kaia said, a vein in her temple throbbing. “Get out. I won’t break the Prophet’s Mandate, and if I can help it, neither will you. Take your two slaves and leave.”

“Fine.” Soledad stepped so close to Kaia that their noses almost touched, despite the Advisor’s taller stature. “But when you see the next beacon blink out, just remember—it’s on your head. Zen will come for you soon enough.”

Soledad stalked back out the gray door, and Korreth followed without being told. Behind them, he heard the Advisor take a shuddering breath.

Soon they exited the temple and headed back toward the living quarters where they’d left Jorrim. Children ran back and forth on the path in front of them, and the scent of delicious stew wafted under his nose from one of the houses.

Homesickness punched him the gut. He’d missed most of his children’s childhood. Did they ever think about their father’s disappearance? When Zen showed up looking for technology, would they try to fight him?

As Soledad twisted the lever on the yellow partition of the building, Korreth heard laughter coming from inside. When the door slid to the side, they saw Edanna sitting on the bed next to Jorrim, showing him a piece of animal hide, tanned and smoothed out.

Jorrim glanced up with a genuine smile on his face as they came in, which disappeared when he noticed their mistress’s expression. Soledad crossed her arms and stared at Edanna. The freckled woman got up and took her leather with her. As she passed by Korreth, he saw hundreds of tiny symbols covering the hide. Edanna disappeared into a side room.

Jorrim’s brows drew together. “What’s going on? I’ve been resting as you commanded, mi—Soledad.” New bandages covered his naked chest, his shirt open.

“We’re no longer welcome here. It’s time we were on our way.”

Jorrim opened his mouth to say something, but seemed to think better of it. He slid off the bed and grabbed the bag of medical supplies the Advisor had provided. Korreth shouldered the other bladders and packs they’d had with them when they arrived, and took both the guns as well. They left the litter stowed against the wall.

Soledad stepped outside, and Edanna returned from the other room. Korreth joined Soledad outside, to give Jorrim and the woman what privacy he could. Jorrim paused in the doorway, and the freckled woman handed him a heavy sack.

“Here. Take this with you on your travels. It’s food and water.” Edanna stepped close to him and put a string of beads over his head. “It will keep you safe.” She gave him a peck on the cheek.

Jorrim put a hand up to touch the white, blue, and brown beads of the necklace. “Take care of yourself. Warn your people that a powerful man may come soon. It’d be safest to let him have whatever pieces of lost technology he asks for.”

Edanna nodded.

He lowered his voice and said, “He may also want to… talk to the Advisor. Don’t get in his way.”

“Come, Jorrim,” Soledad said from outside the building. Jorrim’s eyes narrowed but he said nothing. Once they were all outside, Soledad spun the lever. As the door separated them from Edanna, the young woman clutched the hide with the symbols on it to her chest with a worried expression.

When they turned around, the old man and his platoon of soldiers awaited them. They silently escorted Soledad, Korreth, and Jorrim on the path through the town, this time along the eastern wall. Jorrim stared at the ground in front of him as they moved between buildings, as though he didn’t want to see anything else of Searchtown.

Instead of tapping, Korreth decided his question was harmless enough to ask aloud. “What was on that tanned hide she showed you?”

Soledad motioned at them. “Be quiet.”

Jorrim glared. When they reached the eastern wall, Korreth started to speak to Yarren, but found his voice wouldn’t work—Soledad’s nanotech carried out her command.

Yarren and a fellow guard stepped forward to help Jorrim over the wall. A stone wobbled as Korreth dropped to the other side. He waited nearby in case he needed to help Jorrim on the other side.

Yarren’s counterpart put a hand out to assist Soledad, and she graced him with a glorious smile. He grinned back. Korreth settled for waving goodbye to the guards, and Yarren called, “Good luck out there.”

“Now you may speak,” Soledad said as they turned their backs to Searchtown.

“Where to now, mistress?” Jorrim voice was carefully neutral.

She said nothing, staring at the dancing grasses. Finally she took a deep breath and said, “Back to where we last saw Zen’s slaves.” She set out toward the east.

“Why?” Korreth followed her path through the grasses but couldn’t help wondering what her strategy would be after hearing her conversation with the Advisor. “You could hide somewhere, as a part of a Purebred tribe, for example. Zen would never know.”

Their mistress began muttering to herself, “I can’t believe this is happening. Ageless have died over the centuries. They’ve gone mad. Gotten themselves killed. Fallen to natural disasters. Any number of stupid, preventable deaths. But to be killed by one of our own?”

Korreth itched to tell Jorrim everything he’d learned, but their code limited any in-depth discussion of such concepts.

Soledad didn’t look back to see their reactions. “Bastards killed Zen’s sister, but instead of going after them, he starts killing other Ageless? Gryid escaped his kidnappers, but I have no idea where to seek him out. I’m not sure where any of the others might be... Well, I haven’t survived this long by sulking, now have I?”

Her rhetorical question seemed like a bad sign to Korreth. Still walking shoulder-to-shoulder with Jorrim, he wanted to tell him that Ancient technology made Soledad’s ‘compulsion spell’ possible, but he wasn’t sure how to convey that through taps.

Jorrim let out a breath. “So… you have a plan?”

Soledad’s expression hardened. “We follow his people’s trail back to Zen. I’m not going to just wait around for him to kill us all.”

Overhearing the conversation between two Ancients had made Korreth reevaluate everything he thought he knew about the Catastrophe and the world they lived in. And yet, nothing had changed. He and Jorrim still had no hope of surviving against Zen.

By evening the next day, they’d made it back to the rocks where they’d once left Waylen’s mule tied. Korreth looked for the spot where he’d lost consciousness—Dalan and his companions fading into the distance as Soledad and Jorrim became huge in the foreground, rushing toward him as he fell.

No bloodstain marred the ground where he had fallen, but he supposed the dust had blown around enough to have erased it since then.

He absently scratched at his shoulder, where only a slight scar remained. “What happened to the mule?”

Jorrim turned at his voice. “What?”

“Waylen’s mule. What happened to it?” The rocks towered over Korreth. When he leaned against one, the heat seeped into his arm.

“Oh. We strapped you to its back and made good time to the forest that way. It was the first casualty when the boars found us.”

Korreth’s heart sank, and he stepped back from the rock’s warmth. If anyone from Mapleton had survived the battle against the feline Changelings, they would have needed the bandages and water the mule carried. By rushing Korreth to safety, they’d left the villagers to die.

He gazed south, wondering what remained of the battlefield and whether scavengers and the drylands had already reclaimed everything. Jorrim’s desert boots scuffed the ground.

“I know what you’re thinking, but the felines killed them all,” Jorrim said, laying a hand on Korreth’s good shoulder. “We’ve done worse things than this, my friend. One day the Badlands Army will sweep through this area. We’ve got to warn our people before it’s too late.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better, Jorrim.” He glanced over at Soledad, wondering what she thought of their conversation. Maybe she didn’t care that they still imagined days free from her spell.