The Fate Unfollowed, page 28
The festivities consisted of eight grandstands, each no more than a mile from the next that wound a tight circle around the central courtyard at the base of Pramoore Tower. Every patch of pavement was filled with kiosks and tents, and every space between those was packed with emergency vehicles and bustling families.
Daemon had made his rounds early on, stepping from his limo at the edge of each plaza with Faedra at his side. He’d smile a synthetic smile and shake a few hands before shuttling off to the next sector. This year they’d ended their route in Sector Six. With the assassinations and the emergence of the tsesh, the oft forgotten Six had become the brand-new focus of the city. The people’s excitement with their own election had become a rerun of every election passed, but their preoccupation with the outcome of Six was new. It was exciting and dangerous and could reshape the future of them all.
The executive seats were in a sleek, raised platform twenty feet from the ground. It had a sloping base of black glass and metal that curved up to a beveled cube that was surrounded in blue lights and bulletproof glass. The elevated position offered Daemon and his troupe an unobstructed view of the stage as well as the amassing crowd. From the ground, passersby could see them taking their royal seats. At the back, Kaelus was a white marble statue in a navy suit standing guard at the door. The bandage across the side of his neck was a harsh contrast to his dark and formal attire. Seated in front of him was Daemon, staring intently at the crowd with his obsidian eyes. Faedra was poised and proper in her seat to his left, her fiery hair pinned up and dropping only precise orange curls down her slender shoulders. To Daemon’s right was Valen, wearing a brown suit, his face masked in his permanent expression of hawk-eyed indifference.
Daemon slid a hand down the purple silk of his tie and settled back in his seat. “At last, we’re at the end of all of this. Is everything ready?”
Faedra nodded without looking. “Caul is in his office waiting for your order.”
“And the seditionists?”
“Security is tighter than it’s been in years,” she said. “If there are any rogue agents left alive, it’d be too soon and too dangerous for them to make a move on the ceremony.”
A low smirk crept up on Daemon’s face. “Perfect.”
JAGA WAS SITTING ON a vinyl mattress that had been planted atop a steel cot in a tiny room. It wasn’t a prison in the conventional sense. It was more like a containment cell; two walls of concrete and two of tempered glass, boxed together in the back corner of a lab on the upper floors of Pramoore Tower. It was a tiny chamber, just wide enough for him to lie down on the cot or to pace in tight circles in front of it. He’d spent the night alternating between the two while Bwrynn slipped between sleep and foggy consciousness on the other side of the room beyond his cell.
It had been a long and contemplative drive back to the tower. Jaga had stared out the tinted windows of the car while working out what fate the agents may have had planned. Daemon wanted him dead, that much he knew. But Jaga was well-known in the sector, and their arrest at the hospital had kicked up quite a bit of public dust, making a private execution all but impossible anymore. No, he suspected that he’d simply disappear behind some laboratory curtain until his name faded from common lips. He would vanish and be forgotten just like the countless tsesh he’d condemned to the very same end. ‘Befitting,’ he thought, ‘if not a little poetic.’
But the night had passed without a word, without a weapon drawn, without so much as the prick of a syringe. Morning was well underway, and Jaga was still alive, still locked in a tiny glass box, and still wondering what might come next.
Two guards had been assigned to them. They weren’t police, nor were they agents of the Legacy. They were private security; polished thugs recruited a dozen at a time by some underpaid headhunter on the ground floor. The guards paid little attention to Jaga throughout the night and even less to Bwrynn. They were there for the paycheck, nothing more.
Jaga had been staring at Bwrynn while he thought, but finally turned his focus on the guards. His eyes danced between them with sinister intent as ideas took shape in his mind. He glanced up and noticed the strip of bored holes in the glass near the ceiling of his cell. They were meant for air circulation, but it also meant that the guards could hear him.
His face slumped into a practiced expression of lazy indifference like an actor about to perform a somber scene. Jaga rose from the cot, his slow demeanor masking the flurry of psychic power that was winding up in his mind. “Excuse me,” he bobbed his chin toward the nearest guard. “Do you have the time?”
“Quiet,” the other man demanded then looked to his partner. “Don’t talk to him.”
‘Don’t talk to him?’ Jaga thought. The guards no doubt knew of his position in the Legacy, possibly even of his reputation as a hunter, but to avoid contact altogether? They hadn’t been ignoring them because they were lazy. They were under orders to avoid interaction. There are many superficial reasons to avoid a situation; fear, anger, disinterest, or distrust, but beneath them all is a single truth. They weren’t prepared for it.
Jaga’s mind went to work as he spoke again, this time lashing his words together with psychic intent. “Aren’t we going to be late?”
“He said be quiet,” the man replied, cracking open the door to his mind.
“I’m hungry,” Jaga continued. “It’s already ten after nine.”
The guard turned sharply toward him and scowled but didn’t advance.
“And we still haven’t eight.”
The scowl began to twist, curving up in confusion.
“I said quiet,” the other man snapped, but his voice seemed far away.
“I haven’t eaten since seven last night,” Jaga went on, “at that diner on six.”
The entranced officer formed the word ‘five’ with his mouth as if he were thirsty.
“It may have been five,” Jaga confirmed with a comforting nod. “Isn’t that what you’re here four?”
“Four?” he asked dumbly, taking one step forward.
“The three of us are going downstairs,” Jaga said, slipping the psychic marbles along the string of words, tripping up the simple guard to slow his comprehension. “Your friend can come two.”
The man was ambling forward on slow and heavy feet, his mind sifting through a haze of numbers and psychic gibberish. He was two steps from arms-reach of the door, but his partner had taken notice and shouted, “Hey.”
One more step.
“I’m hungry,” Jaga repeated softly, “I can’t be the only... one.”
The wits of the guard were lost in fog, his eyes distant and glazed as he took the final step. His partner jumped up behind him, shouting out sounds that fell flat before they could reach the young man’s mind.
“Open the door,” Jaga ordered.
He pressed his thumb against the controls, unleashing a loud buzz into the room.
The guard at the back was rushing toward them and wresting his gun from its holster. “Aiken, wait! What are you doing?”
The moment Jaga heard the click of the lock he smashed his foot against the door, kicking it open and into the face of the dumbfounded man. His nose popped a splash of blood against the glass as he was rattled from his daze and toppled backward to the floor.
Jaga jumped from the cell and pivoted around the door, ducking behind it as gunshots flooded the air and a storm of bullets hammered at the glass in front of his face. A web of white cracks splintered out around his vision, becoming wider and thicker with every shot.
He dropped to one knee and yanked the pistol from the unconscious man’s belt. Another three shots blasted at the glass. Jaga sucked in a steady breath and huffed it out. His eyes twinkled with power, and he fired a wave of psychic energy at the gunman before kicking the door aside, raising the gun and shouting, “Stop!”
It was a brief hesitation, barely long enough for the echoes of the gunfire to fade away, but it was more than Jaga needed. He lunged forward, twisted the man’s gun arm away and punched the hilt of his own weapon into his throat just beneath the jaw. The guard’s eyes rolled up and he dropped like dead weight to the floor, his gun scraping and clacking across the tiles.
Jaga double-checked the two men with a quick glance to each then rushed to Bwrynn’s bedside. He didn’t know the building’s layout beyond the door, but someone would have heard those shots and they’d have only seconds to escape.
AKARA WAS SITTING ON the metal lip of a subway platform, his feet dangling over the edge and hanging above the dead tracks. His hands were clamped together in thick, metal cuffs and two armed tsesh were standing over him on either side. His head was hanging to his chest, his human eyes examining the handcuffs through the rogue strands of long hair that had escaped his ponytail.
The tsesh had managed to restore small pockets of power throughout the underground system, and weak yellow bands of light now fluttered back and forth from life around the crowns of the station’s pillars. The air was humid and dirty, glittering in dusty sheets along the dim yellow rays. The world felt like it was made of cardboard, thin, dry, without texture or temperature. Akara, the would-be prince of the tsesh was little more than a paper doll, dressed up and moved around like a two-dimensional plaything for people who never cared.
He opened and closed his fist. The skin of his palm still tingled, and he swore he could still feel the grip of the pistol in his hand. He couldn’t remember squeezing the trigger or the recoil of the gun when he shot. His memories were a mess of still frame photos scattered across a floor. Individually, he recognized each moment, but they were all out of order and, try as he did, he couldn’t get them to make sense.
His father was dead. Marianne was dead. His unborn child was dead. All his tethers to the world had been cut. He was lurching in the wind with no sense of direction and no safe place to land. As near as he could tell, he was dead too. He just had to keep on living afterward. But the day was still young.
The shriek of rusted hinges pierced through the station. Across the tracks, in the failing light, Akara saw Kade emerging from one of the black doors down the tunnel. The large, bearded shadow of a man walked slowly toward them with a solemn look wilting the bold features of his face.
Kade’s feet fell in heavy clops on the concrete. He glanced up then waved away the two sentries with a flick of his fingers. They granted a courteous bow before disappearing down the tracks, leaving the young prince alone with the somber giant.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Kade? Why didn’t anyone tell me that my mother was human?”
He sighed a long and ancient breath as he stepped beside Akara then tugged up his pant legs and lowered himself with a groan to sit beside him. Kade’s voice was a deep river of warm chocolate; slow and smooth. “Most of the people who knew were killed in the Abolition. The few of us who remained were sworn to secrecy by your father.”
Akara shook his head. “But why?”
He shrugged his mountainous shoulders. “It was a different time. There was a lot of tension between the humans and the tsesh, and no one wanted to be the guy who tipped the balance.”
“But the whole reason they hunted us was because we were genetically incompatible, a flaw in a closed society.”
Kade snickered. “Yeah, that’s what the last Pramoore led with. Built his whole image on it in fact.”
“So why didn’t my father just tell them?”
“He did. Of course, he did. Your father thought he could stop the whole thing before it began. He believed his love for Nadina could save the world.”
“So, what happened?”
Kade’s thick brow slid up and he puckered his lips. “Nothin. The Legacy came after us harder than ever. Pramoore took a particular interest in you though.” He wagged a finger at the despondent prince. “We don’t know what he had planned, but he was desperate to get his hands on a half-breed.” Kade’s tone went soft as the memories seem to play out behind his eyes. “He took your mother, tried to use her to lure us out.”
“Just like my father said.”
“Almost worked too. We knew it was a trap, but we all loved that girl. Ain’t nothin’ we wouldn’t have done to save her.” His voice withered to a faraway whimper. “And she knew it. In the end, she sacrificed herself to save you, to save all of us.” He heaved a breath and turned his head to the ceiling to keep the tears inside his eyes. “For all the good it did.”
Tears trickled to the tip of Akara’s nose before falling to splash on the cuffs that bound him. “I’m sorry, Kade.” Grief finally overtook him and contorted his face. He wept deep and heavy. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for everything.”
“Hey,” Kade consoled him, wrapping a large arm around the prince, and pulling him into his chest. His own tears slipped from his eyes and glistened in his wiry beard. “We’re gonna figure this out. We’ll get through it like we always do.”
“But my father...”
Kade bobbed his head in sharp nods, pressing his damp lips together. “I know. I know. It’s okay. The truth is, the Rhago I knew died a long time ago.”
“There’s nothing left,” Akara cried into Kade’s giant body. “I’ve lost everything.”
“That’s just how life works, ain’t it? For all of us. Eventually it will always cost us everything.”
They cried together for a long time, their sniffles and sobs fading down the tunnel into whispers in the dark.
When Akara felt that he had wept enough, when there was no more purpose to it all, he rolled his face from Kade’s chest and stared blankly into the shadows across the way. “Are you going to kill me?”
Kade coughed a sound that was somewhere between sorrow and laughter. He squeezed the young prince tighter, almost as if he meant to purge the notion from his very bones. “No,” he answered. “No, of course not. Quite the opposite in fact.”
Akara leaned back, wiping his tears with the backs of his hands. He didn’t ask, but the question was clear on his face.
“C’mon,” Kade finally answered, retrieving a small key from his pocket. He pressed it into the handcuffs and released the prince. “We gotta get you cleaned up.”
“For what?” he asked, rubbing at the red marks the cuffs had left behind.
“For your coronation.”
“For my coro─ what?” The response leapt out loud from Akara’s lips. “My coronation?”
“You’re Rhago’s only heir.”
“But Kade, I...” Akara stopped himself. He couldn’t bring himself to speak the words. He couldn’t admit out loud that he’d murdered his father just a few hours before, as though if he kept it to himself, kept it from the open air of the world, then it wouldn’t be real.
“Yeah, I know,” Kade offered sympathetically. “But in the end, none of that matters. All that matters are those scales.” He pointed to the prince’s eyes then began maneuvering himself to his feet, pressing his hands into his knees and groaning like a lumbering machine. “Like you said, we don’t got much left anymore, but at least we got that. The black scales of the royal line. That’s the way it’s always been and, especially now, we need that to mean somethin’.” He plunged a meaty hand to Akara and smiled, his beard still twinkling with his tears.
Akara nodded absently and took his hand without looking up. “Okay.”
Chapter 22
Jaga’s momentum crushed against a large window at the end of a hallway high above the city. His chest was heaving over panting breaths. His heart was pounding in a rushed but steady rhythm, responding to his sprint down the hall, the uncertainty of their escape, and his concern for the groggy young girl under his arm.
Bwrynn was awake, though she hardly seemed aware of it. Her head was heavy and rolling around on her neck. The world was a blur of washed-out shapes and streaks of light, rushing forward and back, tugging her through doorways and stairwells. There was a bulging pain at the base of her skull, bulky and throbbing like someone had pumped a blood vessel full of clay. It kept her senses from reaching her brain, and her brain from reaching her body. She struggled to move beyond it, to clear her head of vertigo and focus on a single point. She’d try to close one eye, but the other always followed. She felt her head wobbling recklessly on her shoulders but had only the strength for one limb at a time, and from what she could gather of the situation, her legs needed priority.
Jaga cupped a hand around his eyes and peered through the window. They were halfway down the tower and standing along the western wall. The shining gray awning of the main entrance was several hundred feet straight down. Beyond the front steps, he saw the swarming crowd in the plaza. It was a kaleidoscope of colored dots and pop-up tents that danced with glowing ads and brazen logos. Distant holograms twirled images in the air; smiling sandwiches, dancing bratwurst, and balloons wiggling in digital wind.
“The Dark Ocean,” Bwrynn mumbled into her chest.
It was the first thing she’d uttered in days, a welcome sound that pulled Jaga’s attention back inside. “What?”
“It’s everywhere. It’s all around us.”
“Yes, Bwrynn. Yes, we know that, but right now we have to keep moving.”
“Jaga?” his name crept from her lips in a whimper as though she was seeing him for the first time. The pain in her skull cinched her eyes into slits and pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth.
“Yes child, it’s me.” He pulled her close and brushed his hand down her cheek, “I’m here.”
“We’re not alone.” She nearly sobbed the words, her frightened and desperate tone rattling deep into Jaga’s nerves and prickling at his skin.
