27. TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-SEVEN
CALVEROUS
Location: Jiradesh Desert
Pain.
The plum-fucking-coated reminder that Calver was still living. If mortality was a two-sided coin, how fortunate to receive continual feedback that he was still on the side which faced the sun.
Or at least some feedback. The explosion from the Tera’thian tampered plate had chewed through enough of his back to expose the barbs implanted there.
Calver’s tattered shirt hewed to his torso, seared into his skin like fishnet clinging to reef.
The rancid stench of burnt flesh mingled with smoke in his nostrils, and it all melded into the gasping sounds of his breath.
Around him, the desert was a bright blur of sun and sand, spattered with the shadows of tents and wagons.
Yells sounded behind him, and the sand darkened before him as smoke blotted out the relentless light.
Calver stumbled through it all, realizing only then that his arm had been slung over someone’s shoulders.
Through the haze of his thoughts, he patted at his front pocket.
Fankalo’s letter was still there. He focused on putting one foot before the next as Dex steered him towards the rows of tents where he and Nikalus made their rest. When they reached it, Calver collapsed onto a bed roll on his stomach.
Dex’s expression confirmed it: burns severe enough to reveal him. “What—what can I do?” His voice shook. “Do you need water? Do you need… a medic?” A fated surgeon, maybe. Better yet, a miracle. Calver shook his head. “Bandages?”
What he needed was to get as far and fast away from the encampment as a maimed body could take him.
But that wasn’t an option. He had to attend the damned rally Niklaus had written him into.
He and Niklaus were already affiliated to anyone who had been keeping tabs on them; if he didn’t show after the explosion, it would be too easy to put the pieces together.
He couldn’t afford for people to come looking for him when he was at the closest point to the coast since they’d left Chira’na.
The only option was to bide time he didn’t have.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. What he would give for a day without unprecedented odds.
Bandages would suffice. Better than none. He nodded to Dex and, suddenly self-conscious, rolled onto his side. He didn’t want to think about what Dex might think, what his condition implied.
A muscle worked in Dex’s jaw. “A shirt, too, then. The march starts in less than an hour. Let’s get you shaped up.”
And to think, just weeks ago, he’d been contemplating ways to hide the boy’s body.
When Calver didn’t respond, Dex crawled from the tent. The unsecured opening flapped behind him in the breeze. Calver curled his fingers around Fankalo’s message and unfurled it to re-read. He couldn’t leave any room for misinterpretation.
‘I know you’re in the caravan. Get out. The shields aren’t worth investigating.
My Tera’thian intelligence has given confirmation of their interference in that shipment.
They’ve tampered with the influx retainer on the shields, but it’s not at Aetech’s stratum.
They’ve created a new one, layered under it.
Assume what you will. We’re in trouble. My second says they’re using something called remote activation.
One activator will trigger all of them. They’re housing it in Steila’s central tower.
Ani’s amassed six thousand heads in Solutium. Their eyes are on Steila. Whatever tie you have to the Red Wing, it’s beyond our help.
I might need your skills at Dreiden when Aetech faces the fallout from this. Find cover in Thaligan. I’ll send an escort to relocate you.’
The second scan only filled Calver with rage enough to light up another wagon.
‘Get out’, Fankalo said. Not ‘Prevent this’.
It burned. Fates, it burned. She was supposed to be better than him.
If fifteen thousand of those shields ignited all at once, there wouldn’t be an ambush at Steila. There would be nothing left for the Tera’thians to attack. Coronation be damned. Her entire intent behind this gambit had been to save lives. Sacrificing more to get there defied the entire principle.
He stuffed the paper into his pocket, and suddenly remembered the second note and charcoal. He’d forgotten them in the panic that had followed Fankalo’s message: the tip-off to search for a different stratum, which finally confirmed the flaw, and that another possessed his abilities.
He unfolded the scrap to reveal a different, tightly curled penmanship. Anger abated. Anxiety and want filled its void.
‘Death clouds my second sight. Something is about to go wrong. See me? Before the sun rises. The infirmary tents behind the command row.’
Calver crumpled the paper. Threw it to the corner of the tent.
Then he went after it—a labor of hands and knees—and smoothed it back out. He clutched to his chest with one hand and put his head into the other.
Death had always been on the horizon. It had only been the matter of it getting close enough for her to see it.
Calver had no fear of death, but he was afraid of all the things he would never get to tell her.
A fear he was determined to embrace. Because it would be irresponsible—unreasonable—cruel for her to know the way he felt before leaving her alone in this world.
Better for her to believe she had been alone all along. Better not to see her again.
Dex returned. Calver stuffed the note away.
The boy dropped a linen package in front of him. “Clothes. Antiseptic. Bandages,” he panted. “I need to tell Atti. This is going to fall back on her… she probably already had a plan in place in the case that it did.”
Dex rummaged through the Red-Wing-issued gear and pulled out a loop of wire with a thumbnail-sized plate affixed to it. Beneath it clung a bead of glass-encapsulated Ruxechorin.
The boy began tapping on it.
Calver signaled slowly once, then again.
“I’m telling my sister the plates have been altered.
I…” Dex trailed off, staring at Calver’s hands as he gestured for the boy to explain further.
The only messages permitted in or out of the encampment were by command-owned carrier birds.
“This works as a part of a remote set. The other is in Seraphinden.” Again with the remote activation: a whole separate distortion concept Calver would quickly need to master before it made him its fool.
“When I was a kid, it was just her and me. She taught me light codes to check in with her when she had long work shifts and I was home alone and…”
Calver’s furious signaling stopped him short again.
Dex shifted like there was something unpleasant beneath him. “Ahm. She does.”
“I’ll tell her.” Dex looked at him very carefully. “Thank you,” he added. “Do you know how they did it?”
“You mean, one that isn’t Aetech’s stratum?” The rest of the question hung unsaid. As far as the rest of the world understood, there was no other stratum.
Calver wasn’t the only one reeling at the implication.
Cryptic as cryptic came, but its meaning was easy to assume.
Ruxechorin had been synthesized from a single Ruxian nearly a century ago.
Pulling from another stratum meant pulling from another Ruxian.
Calver swallowed. It shouldn’t be possible, and yet three months ago he’d brought a Ruxian into his confidence.
He wouldn’t have thought that possible either.
“How?”
Dex blew air from his cheeks. He crossed and uncrossed his arms. “He was telling the truth, Meyernes. Wasn’t he?”
Calver confirmed in his usual way.
“Fucking asshole.”
Who knew what sort of trials Niklaus would face after what had transpired.
The mess supply wagon wasn’t the only that had been damaged; at least a half dozen others had been rendered useless by the blast. Damage notwithstanding, if Thyatira knew about the Tera’thian interference—and every inch of Calver believed he did—he would know what Niklaus knew.
The dishwasher was dead. Dead, dead, dead, and he’d taken the fall for Calver. Calver wasn’t worth it.
“Are you going to be alright?” Dex asked, brow furrowed.
Calver waved a hand. There was only one path forward.
A horn sounded in the distance. The recruitment would leave for its daily trek in ten minutes.
“Time to pack up.”
Calver raised himself to his knees. His vision swam. Dex gasped quietly. Calver wondered if the pale, diminutive boy had ever even sustained an injury.
“What can I do?”
“You mean notes?”
Calver nodded.
“Thyatira’s given me access and authority to whatever I need. Unless it involves any martial experience or education—which is the only thing I actually wanted out of this caravan.”
There it was. The admission that Dex was in Thyatira’s pocket.
The only way to fix this was to cut west and take a boat to Steila before the Red Wing arrived.
They stared at one another for a long time.
“I’ll find a way.”
When the daily march ended, Calver collapsed, back aching, fluid seeping through his bandages. He hadn’t had a meal at highsun. He was too tired to eat now.
The mess wagon was gone, his issued equipment with it. Calver, instead, crawled into Dex’s tent again. Door, no door. He was asleep in moments.