Chapter 13 #2
There was significant training and trial-and-error to go through if witches who couldn’t currently portal outside of using portal stones were going to be able to manage that gap, but Nyx had been talking magic theory with Morgen and Griff the last few weeks and they thought there were workarounds.
Nyx wasn’t going to explore those workarounds—or give up whatever she was no doubt going to have to give up in bargaining with Bryn—unless she knew she had Tristen’s help first.
“How many do you have?” Tristen asked.
“Enough.” She hoped. “If I can prove to you that doing this won’t be an irreparable failure of infrastructure, will you do it?”
“I don’t know.” He tossed back the rest of his whiskey, then said, “One. I’ll do one for you, as a trial run. But I want something from you first, and it isn’t to talk to the Congregation.”
“Okay.” She had a feeling she wasn’t going to like whatever it was he wanted. “And what is that?”
“I want you to find my mother, and I want you to take me to her.”
Nyx had been right. She didn’t like it. Normally, reuniting someone with their lost parent would be something she was only too happy to do, if it was within her power. But she hadn’t forgotten the look in Tristen’s eyes when he’d talked about his mother.
“And what are you going to do once you find her?”
His eyes narrowed. “I’d say that’s for me to decide, wouldn’t you?”
“Look, I know all about terrible mothers,” Nyx said. “Believe me, I do. I also know what it’s like to contemplate doing what I suspect you’re contemplating doing. But I don’t think you want to follow through.”
“What are you talking about?” Evra asked.
Tristen ignored her, leaning across the island toward Nyx. “You want me to ride the edges of morality because it’s something you want done? Because it’s something you think is right? Then you’d better be willing to do the same for me.”
The words struck a nerve in her. He wasn’t wrong.
But there was something he’d said earlier, when he’d told her the story about his mother.
That her last words to him had been to tell him to be brave.
Maybe Nyx was reading into it something that wasn’t there, simply because she didn’t want to believe his mother had sold him.
She knew it was possible. Some people had no conscience or compassion.
Some people made appalling decisions because those decisions were easy.
Others made those decisions because they thought they had no other options.
But Tristen had been a child when he’d been taken, and things weren’t always what they had seemed to a child.
“Okay. I’ll find your mother. I’ll take you to her. ”
“Why do I sense a condition coming?”
Nyx smiled. “On the condition that when you go to speak to her, I go with you.”
“You think you can change my mind?”
“I think that when confronting problems, it’s often helpful to have a neutral third party.”
“Fine.” He settled back in his chair. “Just you, though.”
“Fine,” she echoed. “So to clarify the terms, I find your mother, you talk to her, then you free one Station, Avatar, and Guardian of my choosing. Anything more than that is up to you.”
“Agreed,” he said.
If Nyx hadn’t been sitting down, she would have fallen down. Griff was going to be free. She was afraid to believe it too much, afraid that this—that Tristen—would be snatched out from under her when she wasn’t looking.
She shook it off and focused. If she wanted Griff freed, she had a job to do. “What planet are you from?”
A long pause followed the question. Finally, Tristen said, “I don’t know. Maybe I did when I was a kid, but I don’t remember the name now.”
Nyx’s earlier fear coalesced into the sudden realization that she didn’t even know if Tristen’s mother was still alive.
And now, she didn’t know where to find her.
She’d expected Tristen to know what planet and city he was from, had thought finding his mother would be no more difficult than portaling them there and letting Kaden find the nearest trail that bore a similarity to Tristen’s.
She shoved the fear down. She’d found planets before. “What was it like?”
“Bright.”
“Bright,” Evra echoed, in the sort of tone that begged for a glare, which Tristen supplied.
“Really bright. All the time. And hot. And sandy.”
“Wonderful,” Evra said. “Morgen, how many ley line planets have bright, hot, sandy cities?”
“I’m sure I can’t recall them all off the top of my head.”
“You once recited to me, in alphabetical order, every planet that has bioluminescent fungi.”
“I researched it for a science experiment.”
“The point being, I am quite certain you can manage this.”
Morgen sighed and shot Tristen an apologetic look. “Sixty-seven.”
“Do you remember anything else?” Nyx asked.
Tristen shook his head. “I was a kid when I left and I—after a while, I didn’t want to remember anymore.”
Nyx was thinking they were about to have to exhaustively narrow down a list from sixty-seven planets when inspiration struck her. “Do you remember your native language?”
“Why? Can your translator spells identify it?”
“No. Well, I suppose they identify it in the sense that they translate it, but no they can’t tell us what it is.
But Morgen’s a polyglot. He understands language structure.
I’m sure if he writes down a few sentences, when we get back to Earth Between and archive access, he can trace the language back to your birthplace. ” She turned to Morgen. “Right?”
“It might take slightly more work than that, but yes, that’s a brilliant idea.” Morgen patted various pockets, then asked, “Don’t suppose you have a pen a paper?”
Tristen got up, rummaged in the drawer beneath the landline phone cradle—the actual phone was still lying on the living room floor—and returned with a miniature yellow legal pad and a pen that looked like it had been chewed on at some point.
Morgen took them both without comment. “I am going to turn my translator spell off.” He tapped the tattoo, sending the spell into its dormant state.
“Please speak a few basic phrases, if you would.”
“You turned it off?” Tristen asked. “How am I still understanding you?”
“As Nyx said, I adore languages. When I knew circumstances would likely take me to Earth at some point, I learned the English language, as Earth Between’s Station was located in an English speaking country. Now, if you wouldn’t mind?”
Tristen hesitated. His face took on the kind of distant expression a person got when they were trying to remember something they’d learned so long ago that they weren’t actually sure if they still knew it or not.
After a moment, he haltingly said, “Good morning. How are you?” Or at least, that was what Nyx heard, since her translator was still active.
Morgen didn’t write down a single word, pausing with the pen just touching the paper. “Kaden, would you turn off your translator please?”
Looking about as pleased as he ever did about anything, Kaden tapped his tattoo.
Out of curiosity, Nyx turned hers off as well.
Morgen spoke rapidly, a stream of syllables Nyx recognized only in the sense that she had heard them before, having turned her translator spell off in the past to hear all of her friends’ native tongues.
She recognized the cadence and some of the syllables, but she didn’t know any of the words.
She did recognize that when Tristen answered, haltingly, it sounded like it was in the same language. Then Kaden joined in. Still about as chatty as he ever was, only two or three words. Enough for Tristen to say something in response.
Morgen looked at Nyx and, in English, said, “No need to scour the universe. He’s from Raveras. Somewhere inland in the southern reaches, I’d guess, based on the dialect.”
Raveras. As in Morgen’s home. As in Kaden’s home.
Evra, who had already turned an interesting shade of white, blanched a little further when Morgen turned to her and said, “Remember when I asked you to meet my mother? How do you feel about doing that sooner rather than later?”
Like any good best friend would, Nyx saved Evra from a question she clearly wasn’t ready to answer. Reactivating her translator, Nyx diverted Morgen’s attention. “How can you go home? Aren’t you still a fugitive?”
While she had been curious as to why Morgen’s and Maruca’s wanted posters had come down and Kaden’s hadn’t, she hadn’t been optimistic enough to think that meant they were both pardoned. Especially since she’d sort of figured that Morgen would tell her if he was no longer wanted by the law.
“Only a little.”
“How can you still be a fugitive ‘only a little’?”
“Wait, he’s the prison planet guy?” Tristen broke in.
Nyx sighed. “No, he is not ‘the prison planet guy’.”
“He is,” Evra supplied, pointing at Kaden.
Thank you ever so much, Evra, Nyx thought acidly. “As I mentioned, it was a wrongful sentence. He was accused of stealing something he didn’t steal.”
Tristen blinked. “You got a life sentence to a prison planet for petty theft?” he asked Kaden.
“There was nothing petty about it,” Evra said, but she at least wasn’t feeling vindictive enough to add that Kaden had ended up in possession of the item in question, even if he hadn’t stolen it. She also pretended not to notice the warning glare Nyx shot her.
Kaden finally took a sip of his coffee and continued to say nothing.
“Okay.” Tristen drew out the word. To Morgen, he said, “What are you wanted for, then?”
“Suspicion of aiding and abetting in the previously mentioned theft got me grounded to my home planet, an order the Council believes I violated.”