Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) (30 page)

“I didn’t think it rained in the Barren,” Mira said.

Dresden didn’t look up from the wheel. “It rains. Only when it does, it’s way stronger. Something about the heat and the dry air.”

Mira stared at the storm. It seemed fitting, all things considered.

All around the rail yard, crews were either diligently working on their ships, or salvaging what they could for scrap. “They’re leaving. Aren’t they?”

Dresden nodded. “Turns out even Grand Bargains have their limits.”

It was the answer she expected. The fleet was decimated, Currency was ashes, it would take years to rebuild. They’d made a bargain, a gamble really, and they’d lost. She had no intention of trying to stop them. What argument could she possibly give to make up for everything they had suffered?

“It’s funny, you know?” Mira said, her voice strangely absent of any bitterness. “The calm that comes when everything’s finished.”

“So you’re quitting too?”

Mira almost laughed. “Dane was the one holding it all together. I can’t lead all of them, no one can, it’s impossible.”

“Maybe that was the problem,” he said, his eyes following hers to the storm. “We are what we think we are, isn’t that what the Helix say?”

“It’s not that simple.”

Dresden leaned against one of the ship’s Grounders, watching the lightning flash in the distance. “You ever hear of the Tonopah Valley?”

The question wasn’t what she expected, and she looked at him oddly.

“Very northern end of the Barren. Still flat, but everything’s starting to get green again, lot of grass, trees, lot of pathfinding to get a ship through there. Because it’s still the Barren, it gets hit with droughts, which means in the summer you have a lot of really dry vegetation, and it can all go up like a match. Several years ago, a lightning strike set it off, whole thing went up in a blaze. Flames burned through the mountains and then spread down into the valley. It was an inferno, I remember you could see the smoke from Currency.”

His voice had a haunted tone to it now, far-off. Whatever the memories were, they weren’t pleasant.

“There was a Captain, name was Pierce,” he continued. “His ship was the
Wind Fare,
and he had the very bad luck to have been moored right in the middle of those hills when the fire started. By the time the crew was up, they were surrounded. Flames behind them, flames to the left, to the right, down in front of them where the valley was, there was nowhere to go.”

“What did he do?” Mira asked.

“Pierce sent everyone but a handful of volunteers down below, had them seal everything best they could. Then he ordered full Chinook, burned his Zephyrs … and raced right down into that valley.”

“Why?”

“Ship was gonna burn no matter what he did, fires were closing in. So Pierce figured he’d go for it, maybe punch through the fire line at the end of the valley. It was the shortest way out, after all. He took the wheel himself, from what I heard, steered toward the lowest flames he could see, trying to keep the sails from burning, ’cause if they went, it was all over. The
Wind Fare
caught fire in the low decks, and the crew inside tried to keep it all at bay. She burst out the end of the flame line like a torch on four wheels. Sails were gone, masts were cinders, wheels were melting where she stood. The crew used axes and punched a hole through the hull and got out. Three dozen on that ship, more than two survived.”

Dresden finally looked at her, studying her soberly. “We all face moments like that. Choices that lie between us and what we have to do. The point where you have to decide to keep going forward … or just stay where you are and burn. Wind Traders call that place the Valley of Fires.”

Mira felt a chill run down her spine. She related to the story more than made her comfortable. “Are you saying
you’re
at that point right now, Dresden?”

Dresden exhaled a slow breath, studying her intently. “No, Mira. I’m saying
you
are.”

He held her look a moment, then he turned and started back toward the center of the ship. His words had hit in an almost tangible way. He was right, wasn’t he? She
was
at that point. But did she have the strength to to pick up the pieces all over again? She didn’t know. She honestly didn’t.

“Dresden,” Mira called after him. He stopped, but didn’t turn. “Captain Pierce. What happened to him?”

Dresden was silent a long moment. “He burned to death at the wheel. But he got his ship through.”

Mira closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Dresden had blended back into his crew on the main deck. She sat down, staring at the storm again. It was closer now. More lightning flashed, and this time, muted thunder rolled over the rail yard.

Something just to the north of the dark clouds caught her eye then, just barely visible in the fading light. It was far away, hundreds of miles, yet so big it was still visible. A giant, hulking black construction that towered over the landscape, even the Severed Tower would have been dwarfed by it. A bright beam of pure energy shot from its apex, arcing up into the sky until it faded from view.

It was the first time Mira had ever seen the building that housed that beam, the object of this whole ordeal, the reason all of this was happening. It was the Citadel, where Zoey was. It was finally close enough to see.

Dresden’s words echoed in her mind.
You have to decide whether to go forward … or just stay where you are and burn.

Mira stared at that giant black monolith, deciding things, weighing options. As she did, she felt something sit down next to her. It was Max. He lay there, looking at her calmly, without his usual glare of disapproval. He put his head in her lap and closed his eyes.

Mira pet the dog on his head. In spite of it all, she smiled.

PART TWO

VALLEY OF FIRES

24.
POWER

THE NONAGON,
Avril noted, felt much larger than it looked from the outside. The stands were empty, the Turret stood motionless, it was all docile and serene, but Avril knew that underneath her feet were yards and yards of mechanics and gears that did all sorts of nasty things.

Tiberius stood a few feet away, conversing with Quade. His demeanor was calm as usual, but underneath she knew he must be tense. Holt Hawkins had not only escaped, but had been aided by one of Tiberius’s most trusted lieutenants, and both had sought refuge with Rogan West. The absence of the Crux and the Skydash above was a constant reminder of the failure. Avril would have been overjoyed, but her feelings regarding Holt were conflicted now.

Archer, for all his faults, had been her brother. She remembered the dark days, struggling to survive in Midnight City, stealing food, warding off gangs and Factions. Archer had taken beatings for her, gone without food for her. Whatever he became, he had been that person once, and Holt Hawkins had ended him.

She would kill the Outlander if she could, but he’d escaped her wrath as much as Tiberius’s now.

“You look troubled.” Tiberius’s voice startled her, she hadn’t heard him approach. Quade was a dozen feet away, watching her, and his stare was strange. He seemed curious, weighing things when it came to her, though there was no indication as to what.

“So do you,” Avril replied. “Ravan must sting.”

“I underestimated her feelings for Hawkins,” he said.

“Would it have made a difference if you had known them?”

“Yes,” he answered, matter-of-factly. “I would have killed them both. These are the decisions you will one day be faced with.”

Avril studied him with disdain. “You’re so sure I want what you have.”

“I know you better than you think,” he replied evenly. “You will take what is yours eventually.”

They stared at each other, and the certainty in his voice made her uneasy.

“I designed this arena, you know, each of its configurations.” He studied the Nonagon, the giant banners hanging over the nine empty seating sections. “They are my favorite designs, the ones I’m most proud of.”

“Only you would be proud of something like this,” Avril stated, but only out of a sense of obligation to disagree with him. In reality, the place fascinated her, the danger that lurked just out of sight. For the first time in months, she felt at home, like she was back in the Strange Lands.

“You think so little of me,” Tiberius replied, “and so much for your Gideon. He’s done far worse than I. Forcing his students to live and die, only to make them stronger. How is that more noble than this place?”

Avril tried to think of a response, but couldn’t.

“You claim to have grown strong,” Tiberius continued. “I would know just how much.”

“Am I supposed to fight your contraptions? I won’t. I’ll let them kill me.”

Tiberius smiled, and there was a hint of warmth in his eyes. It angered her, that affection. Anytime she defied the man … it only seemed to please him.

“Oh, no,” Tiberius said. “The Nonagon doesn’t think, it isn’t
alive
. True power can only be seen in how we deal with others.”

As if waiting for a signal, Quade whistled through his fingers. Four large, burly pirates appeared through the arena’s main gate. Avril watched them move forward. When they reached her, one of them, head shaved, a wicked scar down the side of the neck, stepped forward.

Avril just shook her head. “I won’t fight them either. I won’t do
anything
you want me to.”

“That’s a shame,” Tiberius stated. “Today is going to be unpleasant for you then.”

Avril groaned as the boy’s fist doubled her over. His knee sent her crashing to the ground.

Pain lanced through her head. She tasted blood. Avril had seen it coming—who wouldn’t, the way he telegraphed it? It was embarrassing, but she stood and took it anyway. She wouldn’t do what her father wanted. She would die first.

A kick sent her rolling in the dirt. The world spun, pain shot through her side.

“Nothing?” Tiberius asked above her. “No response at all?

“Go to hell…” she hissed.

Another kick, more pain. The toe of the boy’s boot found the spot between her ribs.

“Perhaps I was wrong,” Tiberius observed. “Perhaps your time in that place was a waste, after all.”

The boy’s boot flipped Avril onto her back. He towered over her, grabbed her by the hair … and punched her. Her head slammed into the dirt. Her vision blurred.

Avril began to feel something new, something that overpowered the pain. Anger. It was starting to burn and build inside her.

“There is no strength in you,” Tiberius observed. “You are no warrior.”

The boy dragged Avril through the dirt by her hair. The others laughed, she could hear them through the haze. It was disdainful, the way they might laugh at a beggar or a weakling.

The rage finally boiled over.

What happened next was instinctual, fueled by some primal part of herself she’d rarely seen surface. Gideon’s training had always stressed fighting without emotion, that it was only when you were dispassionate that you could react in the way you needed.

All that went out the window as Avril reached back and grabbed the boy’s ankles. She pulled and swung her legs up and over her head, punching her feet straight into his face, sending him reeling back.

With the momentum, she launched herself up, landing in a crouch.

The laughing stopped. Tiberius watched expectantly.

She spun and faced the boy. Blood seeped from his nose, it looked broken. He stared back in fury … and charged.

Avril shook her head clear, watched the boy close the distance. He was big, strong, but those were advantages easily neutralized.

She dodged a wild punch, then her foot found the right spot on his knee, snapped it, dropped the kid to the ground. Another kick to his bald head put him out cold.

The pain was forgotten now, replaced with satisfaction. When her father nodded and the three remaining pirates charged her as one, the only thing she felt was an electric sense of eagerness. It had been too long since she’d been tested, and even though she swore to resist Tiberius at every turn, she indulged herself.

It just felt too good.

The first pirate she dropped with a blow to the throat. The other two reached for her, but Avril flipped back and away, rolled, and watched the two kids follow.

They weren’t overconfident anymore, they saw her as a threat now, which meant they would think things through. In its own way, that was a mistake. It gave Avril the few seconds she needed to evaluate them.

The first kid, a stocky redhead with giant biceps, was a left-hander. The second was taller, right-handed, and he wore a patch on his left eye. Good. It would limit depth perception, mask his peripheral vision.

Avril grabbed a handful of dirt and tossed it into the face of the redhead. He groaned and stepped back, blinded, and Avril leapt for the kid with the patch. She moved for his left side, didn’t even have to duck to avoid his wild punch, just leaned and hit him with three lightning-quick strikes.

The kid crashed in a cloud of dust, and she stomped on his stomach, making sure he stayed down.

Avril turned slowly to face the last kid. He’d gotten his vision back, stared at her hatefully.

“You fight dirty, huh, little girl?” the redhead snarled. “Lots of tricks.”

“How you fight isn’t as important as whether you win.” Slowly Avril circled the kid, stretching her arms, flexing her fists, loosening up. God, she felt good, better than she’d felt in weeks. “No more tricks. Just you and me, how does that sound?”

Apparently the boy found it agreeable. He stepped toward her carefully, wary for any other ruse, but there was no need. Avril wanted a fight, one-on-one.

She let him close the distance, let him strike first even. His punch wasn’t bad: straight, no wasted movement, it came with speed. He was used to fighting, used to dropping his opponents quickly. That wasn’t going to happen here.

Avril sidestepped, judging the redhead’s balance. He didn’t falter, didn’t overextend. Good, she thought, she could make this last.