Chapter 14 Cero #2
“You’re not the murdering type,” Musa said.
“You never carried out a full bombing run, even if you did design the transport Sails. You’ve never used the Loha whips, though you helped create them.
You’ve killed, but only in self-defense.
And that’s saying something for a boy who grew up in the poorest slum in Kegar. ”
“How do you kn—”
“Trust me when I say that you should stop asking that,” Musa said. “I have a question for you. Do you plan to wallow in self-hatred and apathy until the Tel Ilessi kills you off, or will you do something to help your people?”
Cero glanced over the edge of the outcropping to the steep drop below. It would be so easy to fall.
“My people need to return south, to Kegar.”
“That rocky little spit of land is poison,” Musa said. “Your crops don’t grow—”
“There are other things we can trade.”
Musa sighed and stared out at the snow-covered peaks of the Nevennes. A chill wind blew across the mountainside, and the rebel drew up his hood.
“You want to build a trade based on air flight,” Musa said.
“Transport, freight. It would have been a fine idea a hundred years ago. But there are fewer windsmithers every year. At the rate you’re losing them, in a quarter century, your numbers will be down by half.
Within a few generations, windsmithing will be relegated to fireside tales.
Your war on the Empire only quickened the fading.
You sacrificed too many pilots you couldn’t afford to lose. ”
“How did you—” Cero stopped himself asking and observed Musa instead. His face held no guile, his body no tension. Musa believed what he was saying. But Cero struggled to comprehend it, for such a thing had never even been spoken of. Not to Cero, anyway.
“If the Triarchy knew our magic was fading, they would have—”
“What, confided in their people?” Musa snorted. “Stupidity is unbecoming on you, Cero. Your Triarchy didn’t want to cause a panic. You see now why Ghaz wanted to keep your people here.”
It certainly explained why Ghaz was shipping ever more Kegari to the Empire. It must also have been why the Triarchs agreed to Aiz’s war. They knew they had nowhere else to go.
“What will you do?” Musa said. “How will you save your people?”
“How in the Spires am I supposed to help them?” Cero asked. “You say our magic is dying. Ghaz and the highborns want us to remain here and steal your land. Aiz wants to take us to a homeland that doesn’t exist. I’m just a pilot—”
Musa’s face hardened. “Don’t insult my intelligence, boy,” he said.
“I don’t know what you are, not exactly.
But I know you aren’t just a pilot. The fact that you’ve painstakingly avoided getting a single drop of Scholar, Martial, or Tribal blood on your hands in the middle of a war tells me that somewhere in that brain of yours is a moral compass, however skewed it might be. ”
“I have blood on my hands,” Cero said. “I—”
“I’m not here to absolve you, Cero,” Musa said.
“That’s between you and your deity. I’m telling you that you have a choice, whatever your past sins.
The Martials and Scholars will never give up the Empire.
Not so much as an inch of it. Either the Kegari leave and survive, or they stay and die slowly, generation by generation.
Because there are more of us than there are of you. And we will never stop fighting.”
“There’s nowhere to go.” The words left Cero’s stomach in knots, for this was the bitter truth and nothing he did could change it. “If we can’t go south, there is no home to return to.”
“Your Tel Ilessi wishes to go to Old Kegar.”
“It was destroyed in a cataclysm a thousand years ago.”
“You don’t know that with certainty,” Musa said. “Don’t you think it’s worth finding out?”
“Go looking for Old Kegar?” Cero laughed. “You’re mad. I don’t even know which bleeding direction it is.”
Musa rolled his eyes. “Ever heard of a map?”
To his alarm, Cero realized that the rebel was serious. “There’s no point. Even if Old Kegar did exist and it wasn’t a blasted wasteland, we’d have no way of getting there.”
“What if I told you that I could get your people there,” Musa said. “Would you go looking for it then?”
Not a bleeding chance. “Our stories are very clear about one thing,” Cero said. “The old country was destroyed. I won’t do this.”
Why? a familiar voice within him whispered. The child from his dreams. Why can you not go, Cero? Who else would go in your place? It must be you.
But he couldn’t leave his people. More than a thousand Snipes had come to Antium and Cero knew Ghaz would bring over more.
Aiz had her magic back—she’d drained Cero the first time.
That meant she’d have to target someone else next to hold on to power.
He couldn’t abandon his fellow Kegari to her mercy—or the Martials and Scholars, for that matter.
Especially to go looking for a place that at best was uninhabitable and at worst no longer existed.
“I won’t go,” Cero said. “It’s an insane idea, which you’d understand if you were Kegari.”