14. FOURTEEN
FOURTEEN
CALVEROUS
Location: Jiradesh Desert
The highmoon had long since passed when Calver followed Niklaus into the mess wagon.
Niklaus pulled an Aetech orb from his pocket and activated it.
It whirred into life, tiny electrical arcs spinning around its ruxechorin core.
Calver hadn’t held one since that day on the rooftop of Chira’na’s Repository.
His fingers itched for it, but Niklaus handed it to him before he even thought to reach.
“Make yourself at home,” he muttered.
The dishwasher’s mood had fallen since they’d left the merchants’ quarter; he was likely descending from a moss canopy.
Chaos curse Calver’s luck. Of course the only signal translator in the Red Wing would be an addict.
Mossers would say anything—give up anyone—to avoid withdrawal.
He’d fucked himself with this deal. The plate request went against his restrictions, and Niklaus would sell him out when push came to shove.
Competing in that amateur rally alone was sure to bring him under Thyatira’s scrutiny.
And yet, Niklaus had come through. Then he’d given Chevek, who had been the gate guard back in Chira’na, the run-around. He’d even offered continued alliance, at least until the recruitment’s next rally in a moon’s time...
With luck, Calver would be gone by then anyway.
Niklaus sniffed and shifted his feet. “I’ll let you get to… whatever you’re getting to. But I’ll be back before the morning mess.”
He exited. The door clacked closed behind him.
Calver locked the latch and set his back against it. He sank to the floor, cradling the Aetech plate to his chest. Three ten-days since his failed demolition, and he finally had one.
Why did it feel like he’d lost everything to get it?
Guilt coiled in his chest as he thought back to Raimee in that courtyard, huddled over him while his chest stitched itself back together. “I still need you.”
No. She didn’t need instability, violence, pain.
In Chira’na, the tree in Creation’s temple had asked her if she wanted him eliminated.
Now he understood it was because he was a fucking parasite.
After seeing her hollow all over again, he was nearly sure that she hadn’t ever really healed him—he had only ever sucked the life from her.
Fates, he could still feel the energy coursing through his veins.
He’d thought it was magic. He’d thought it was destiny.
For twenty days, he’d been high off killing a Ruxian slowly, convincing himself he was helping her. He’d even thought…
Calver closed his eyes, reminding himself of the things that would never be, and the one thing that would—the Tera’thian Coronation. A way forward had presented itself. He had privacy—a door. He could finally investigate what had been done to these plates and bring the knowledge back to his sister.
Every inch of him wanted to begin working, and yet… he hadn’t truly slept since the caravan began. Maybe tonight he could. Fates knew he would need it for the road ahead. A road ahead that, three tendays ago, he’d thought he wouldn’t have to take alone.
Stop thinking about it.
He tucked the plate beneath his tunic and rested his head against the wood of the door. Its cheap grain was better than the world’s finest sleeping draft.
The phantasmal green light of pre-dawn slipped beneath the door, setting Calver awake. A few hours of sleep was more than he’d hoped for. He skipped his morning training session—he could hear Dex snoring in the tent by the door, anyway—to get to work.
Stacked mess trays made a suitable table. Calver set the plate shield upon them and proceeded to pick it apart using a knife from the utensil stores, then put it back together.
Aethertech Mechanics had never produced anything like it before—at least not that he’d seen. Their engineers must have been given further liberties with the influx retainer for the increase in energy it distorted. When activated, the plate generated a glowing repulsory field.
Impressive. It must be why the Tera’thians took stock in it.
The question still remained why they’d escorted the plates’ shipment to Red Wing headquarters in Chira’na rather than steal it.
Something was contrived, here. But Thyatira had worked with the Tera’thians once before—if Calver had never discovered that, he might still have a tongue. Why wouldn’t he do it again?
Calver disassembled it again and carefully removed the ruxechorin core. Several puzzling minutes passed as he examined it, a fog obscuring his mind. Other than the device’s shifted influx retainer, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it.
Despair expanded in the pit of his stomach, compounded by the itch that he was missing something.
Why did this core feel like it would be the death of him?
Had he been rash in assuming it had been tampered with?
It would imply that either Aetech or Dreiden were aligned with the Tera’thians…
or that the Tera’thians had found another with his skills.
Each possibility was worse than the last.
He could just check for interference…
Calver blinked. What was he forgetting? Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember how he’d even tampered with the lamps in the first place. The more he tried to recall, the further the memory slipped.
This had happened before. This mental fog. It meant only one dreadful thing: the memory belonged to the Survivor. Now he would need to retrieve it.
His need to know outweighing his fear-of-knowing, Calver used the knife to pry open the glass again, exposing the ruxechorin core.
Holding it in his palm, he exhaled deeply and slipped into the Void.
The answer was there instantaneously. His hands moved without thought or focus, pressing the blade against his fingertip until a single red bead appeared.
Then Calver did what only he could do. The one thing of value he had been able to offer Fankalo.
The one reason she’d kept him with her for six years, despite the problems he presented.
He set his blood against the core and found communion with it.
Calver’s eyes closed as he settled into the familiar pattern with which the void flowed around him when he held a distortion device attuned to Aetech’s stratum.
It was a flow that seemed tilted—like a note out of tune.
That was right. He’d done this before, thousands of times.
With intense focus, he began to pull the flow, rerouting it toward Dreiden’s stratum—his stratum.
But something was off this time. He might figure it out, if he could only—
The dishwasher entered the wagon.
Chaos, if there had ever been worse timing. Calver shook his head. As he surfaced from the void, a tingling set into his limbs. Clarity struck him cold. How had he not realized he’d been doing this with his blood all this time? What else had the Survivor repressed?
Niklaus leaned against the shelves of meal trays and nodded at the disassembled plate shield. “So, what’s your interest in this thing?”
Calver fought the spiral. And what was wrong with him.
“And, ahm, what could be wrong with it?”
What indeed? And why hadn’t Fankalo told him she was using his cores to make copycat plates?
This was from the shipment she’d intended for Dreiden to replace, had his demolition been successful.
She had laughed when he asked her how the judiciary would react to an operation so clearly contrived.
“Half of running a business is having two-thirds of the judiciary in your pocket.”
How hadn’t he realized then that she’d pulled the wool over his eyes? She’d created fifteen thousand of these plates without telling him… Chaos, did it burn.
“Are you trying to figure out how it works so you can steal it?” Niklaus prodded. “Many have tried. Many have failed.”
A statement that might have been valid, had Calver not given Fankalo the resources—his own fated blood—to replicate it nearly a decade ago.
Niklaus snorted and drank from his canteen, the contents of which smelled stronger than water. “Telling a lie is one thing, but lying about Aetech trade secrets under my nose doesn’t display prime intellect.”
“I’m not sure I’ve come to understand your version of a joke. It’s a matter of tone, really.”
Calver let their eyes meet for the first time during this conversation.
Niklaus’s brow wrinkled. “You… you don’t know who I am?”
Calver turned back to the plate. After testing the core a half-dozen ways to be sure the distortion influx retainer was still in place, he reassembled it. Niklaus watched it all.
“Probably?”
Niklaus pulled a knife from the hoard of utensils. “That nearly sounds fun.”
Calver gripped the device’s handle and gestured for Niklaus to go ahead. Niklaus tossed the knife toward him. The moment it connected with the blue-tinted field, it ricocheted off with alarming speed. Niklaus ducked, narrowly avoiding impalement between the eyes.
“Heavenly halouchas! You could have given me a bit more warning.”
“Kretch. These are hardly defensive so much as they’re their own weapons.”
At that moment, the Azadonian boy pushed his head through the door, fingers rubbing at his temples. “You should have already known that, chikoto. Or are you oblivious to what the company you founded even produces?”
Niklaus shrugged. “I go to board meetings. We vote on things. The details are trivial.”
Calver was sure his heart stopped.
Niklaus circled a hand. “Founding investor.”
Dex snapped to face Calver, mouth askew. “You didn’t know? That explains why you were willing to strike a deal with this snake when you should have known better. Where have you been for the last year?”