43. FORTY-THREE #2
It had been years since Calver had used the Survivor as a cloak against Cul’Mon.
He’d nearly forgotten the strain—like treading water with stones in his pockets.
He’d nearly forgotten the way he’d spent his days in Fankalo’s quarters, capable of little more than sitting still as he restrained it.
How quickly the memories flooded back once he opened that gate.
{You don’t have to fight me. We share the same goal.}
You’ve been using me for my powers.
{You can’t control them without me.}
I can.
{Not as I can. You don’t understand what you are. What you’re capable of. Such sweet destruction.}
Calver’s grip tightened over the lip of the bow, and he stared adamantly into the blue moving beneath him.
He couldn’t void it. He had to withstand it.
With a full year between now and the coronation, he didn’t want to imagine what the Survivor would be capable of if he didn’t cling to his limited control.
With Dex so close, he needed to stay especially mindful. He released a slow, shuddering breath.
The Survivor clouded his every thought: Cul’Mon would capture him and force him to endure every torture, Fankalo would betray him, Dex would turn on him, Raimee wouldn’t show.
There was no point to any of it. He’d forgotten how desperately, for years, he’d wished for all of this to be over.
So different from the week prior: a week spent wondering what it would be like if he didn’t press the activator in the Tera’thian sewer systems on the night of Ani’s coronation.
A week spent wondering if he could be worth more if he just stayed alive.
Somewhere in his mind’s eye, Raimee beamed at him.
And they were alone together. Not in a cave or a palace.
Certainly not in the desert. In a small adobe dwelling.
Something on the hearth. Rain outside. A book in her hand.
Her head on his shoulder. Nobody sucked anyone’s life away. The weight lessened.
{This future you seek cannot manifest. It’s not in your nature.}
What is my nature?
{Destruction.}
Calver flinched as it pressed down again. He nearly slipped, but rose enough to tread water. For now. For Raimee. For Dex. But he couldn’t void the truth forever. He’d charted this course long ago, alighted upon this island, and burned his boat behind him. There was only one future for him.
But, perhaps, many small destinies still lay before it.
Calver and Dex docked the boat in a cove on the fringe of the cliffs of Thaligan.
In the days since Calver had let the Survivor take hold, his conversations with Dex had diminished.
Where they had once spent hours signaling about the mundane—fighting, Dex’s homelife, the terrain—only simple questions and commands remained.
He answered when he could, but he often ignored Dex’s queries without meaning to.
Only ten miles separated them from Steila.
They spent a night and a day fishing along the shoreline.
Then, the night before the Red Wing’s expected arrival, they smothered their fire and sojourned two miles inland.
The grasses and sands that led to Steila’s eastern limits would give them far better cover than coming in from the coast.
Long hours passed in silence before Calver and Dex encroached upon a bluff.
A rippling breeze carried the scent of salty sea and acrid smoke from beyond its rise.
They dropped to their stomachs, bodies pressed against the night-cooled sand, and wriggled their way towards the crest. Calver peered down the basin at the port of Steila, sprawled beneath the moonlight.
Even at a distance and through the dark, the invasion was unmistakable.
Columns of smoke rose into the night sky.
Brilliant pinpricks of fires shone like smoldering rubies in the ruins of what must have been the town’s central square.
Perhaps a hundred flat-roofed, adobe homes lined the even streets that descended towards the port.
Their windows held no candles, and no lamps shone in the street.
A single blue Tera’thian banner flapped along the shoreline.
Beneath the light of the moon, soldiers in dark uniforms marched methodically in pairs through the empty streets. Many stood watch upon the rooftops. Calver searched for indicators of a scourge, expecting to spot a misshaped heap somewhere near the center.
{You don’t have to remember.}
His jaw tightened, fingers clenching the sand as he fought to stay present. This attack was not like what had happened in Kaidech. The architecture had been left intact. The Tera’thians were maintaining a peaceful front, so that when the Red Wing arrived from the east they would suspect nothing.
“Where are the civilians?” Dex whispered.
He dared not reveal how many similar operations he’d once taken part in on Cul’Mon’s behalf.
“Somewhere in Steila?”
Dex didn’t ask how he knew, which was good. With the Survivor bearing down on him, Calver wouldn’t have been able to answer.
At the town’s heart, a tower stood like a sentinel, two stories taller than any of the low buildings. It made sense that an activator would be kept in the best possible vantage point, but it would also be an easy place to get trapped.
He hoped his protesting nerves were very, very wrong.
{Cul’Mon may even sense you now. You are rash, clinging to your control. It will only weaken you.}
“And if we’re seen?”
Calver didn’t respond.
“Got it. Don’t be seen.”
They slid over the dune, sands whispering beneath their boots, and slipped into a ravine.
Numerous palm trees buffered the town’s perimeter.
They used them to take cover from the light of the Aetech lamps lining the city’s edge, first dipping from palm to palm, then from building to building.
Calver moved along a narrow alley towards the abandoned storefront adjacent to Steila’s central tower.
He stopped at a corner and peered around at the structure.
The street separating them from the tower was wide.
Market stalls and carts lined either side, some broken, others overturned, others left untouched, their wares exposed to the empty night.
Calver gauged the distance, whether the open street might be surveilled from above, and the likelihood of being seen.
Bars gated the tower’s windows. A massive door, fit for a fortress, faced the main street.
Getting there would be risky. Getting in, riskier. He looked over his shoulder to survey Dex’s path and raised his fist to indicate clearance. Dex started forward to join him when a shifting of pebbles crunched around the corner. A soft clicking indicated the loading of a tanka bit strip.
If Calver could hear whomever it was, he and Dex could certainly be heard.
{Kill them.}
Suddenly, Dex’s footfalls cut through the night like a rockslide. There was no time to signal.
Calver whipped around the corner. Manipulated the surprised guard’s tanka-bearing arm until it snapped. Latched arms around his neck in a blood choke. Dragged him into the alley.
Dex’s eyes widened. He unlatched the dowaga from his back, but Calver shook his head. Seconds later, the flailing guard went limp.
{Break his neck.}
Calver laid the guard on the ground and averted his gaze. He breathed deeply to resist the Survivor’s urges.
The guard was not much taller than Dex. It was dark. It could buy them a few extra seconds.
Dex tilted his chin.
They took cover in an alley and recouped before their next move. Moonlight filtered into the narrow space. Dex peered at the tower, forehead lined with worry.
Calver asked.
Check the door… Right. Just check the door. Calver nodded and indicated for Dex to wait. Heart thumping, sure he was going to be shot at or assaulted from every direction, he dashed across the street and rattled the handle into the tower.
Open.
He slipped into the room at its base and pressed his back against the wall.
Wide fucking open. Why did that seem so wrong?
The moonlight filtering through barred windows was all he had to see by. Crates of half-unloaded weaponry sat innocently against the far wall. A desk, strewn with books and scrolls, sat against the curved stone adjacent to it. A storehouse for the town’s militia.
Calver waited for an assault that never came. Then, following the Survivor’s lack of urgency, he let his consciousness fan out into the void without slipping beneath it. The eddies of foresight awaited him there—the things that might go wrong. They were endless.
And they were weak.
{Because you are weak.}
Because there was nothing imminently perilous. Calver leveled his focus, keeping his hold, but exploring the boundaries of the void. Could he access this whenever he wanted? A second-sight that gave about a single heartbeat’s glean into the future? If he could stretch it… could he outmatch Cul’Mon?
{You would be taking a gamble over a certainty. Follow that question deeper into the void. You’ll understand.}
Directing attention to a hypothetical while keeping hold of his mind proved nearly impossible. Calver zeroed in on the question, following it deeper and deeper until the corners of his vision blackened. An all-consuming sense of doom struck him so hard he nearly collapsed.
{This is the power you claim as yours. Is that truly what you desire?}
Calver sucked in a breath, trying to stay at the surface. He couldn’t void the Survivor. He couldn’t submit to non-feeling either. He had to suffer through.
{Just let go.}
Good thing he’d had years of practice. If Calver had a gift for any one thing, surely it was suffering. No.