Horizon (22 page)

She looked away then, fiddled with something offscreen. Hoku wondered what she wasn’t saying. Did it have something to do with Karl Strand, or her own mysterious past?

“You’re never going to tell me what happened, are you?” he said. “You could have come with us when we infiltrated the Upgrader kludge. You could be down here with me now. Why not?”

Rollin shook her head, still looking at her lap. “Sometimes it’s easier to forgive others than to forgive yourself.”

He wanted to hug her. Instead he said, “Oh, ‘Poor me,’ is that it? ‘I give up’? Well, we don’t have time for that right now. Get your brain back from wherever it went, and start helping me.”

Rollin looked up, shocked, and he worried that he’d gone too far. But her hurt expression disappeared quickly, replaced by her familiar grumpiness. “Quit your yammering, then, and tell me what you want to do next.”

Hoku was ready for that question. His brain had been working, even if his eyes weren’t.

“First, I need to know everything there is to know about turbines and wave traps, and how I might be able to build one big enough for Kampii but simple enough for their tech. I’ve been looking at the most advanced turbines, but the ancients had to start somewhere, right? They didn’t always have bendable metals and everything they needed. If they could do it, we can do it, too.”

Rollin whistled. “Tough.”

“Then I’m going to build a mobile comm device using these Datastreamers and whatever spare parts Zorro and I can find here,” Hoku continued. “Can you work on a comm scanner? Try to tap into every communication feed you can find? Maybe we’ll get lucky and Karl Strand himself will tell us where he is.”

Rollin slapped her forehead with her palm. “Comm scanner. Who’s the gobbly Gizmo now? I should have come up with that.”

“Well, when you figure it out, tell me how to do it,” Hoku said. “I have a feeling we’ll need every last bit of information we can get.”

Another one of Seahorse Alpha’s comm screens flickered on, as if it had heard Hoku’s conversation. The image resolved into two Aviars: Calli and an older woman that Calli was yelling at. Hoku’s heart tripled its pace.

“No, even if you have to relieve yourself, you find someone else to watch the monitor,” Calli told the woman. She hadn’t yet looked into the monitor herself.

Hoku studied her. She looked thin and tired, her eyes puffy and rimmed with red.

He whispered to Rollin, “I’ve got to go — Skyfeather’s Landing is calling. Here is the frequency they’re using, but . . . don’t tune in for a few minutes, okay?” He pulled up the data on Calli’s feed and repeated the numbers to Rollin.

“Give the girl a big yo for me,” Rollin said, and she was gone.

“Hoku?”

He turned to find Calli’s face centered in the Aviar feed.

“Calli! I’m so glad you made it home okay,” he said. He reached out to touch the screen, but let his hand drop when he realized how stupid that was. Calli sometimes smiled when he did silly things, but she didn’t now.

“I’m home, yes,” Calli said. “And I’m glad you’ve made it to Seahorse Alpha. What’s the status of the Kampii and Deepfell armies? Have you made any progress with an alliance? Is Aluna there?”

Calli’s questions struck his chest like daggers. Hoku searched her face, looking for a hesitant smile, the hint of color in her cheeks, a sparkle in her eyes just for him. He didn’t find any of it.

“Aluna isn’t here,” he said. His voice cracked, and he scowled. “There are problems here. Big problems. She’s trying to forge an alliance between the Kampii and the Deepfell, only the Kampii from the city want to kill the Deepfell instead and steal their breathing devices. It’s a mess.”

“What about Karl Strand?” Calli asked, as if she hadn’t heard him. Or hadn’t cared. “If the Equians killed him already, maybe I can get his army here to surrender.”

Hoku shook his head. “We haven’t found him. The armies are amassing, but they aren’t in contact with each other yet, and no one knows where Strand is.”

He heard someone enter the room on Calli’s end. She looked over, her face grim, and listened to whoever had come in. “Have the wounded been recovered?” Calli asked. The other person answered, but Hoku couldn’t hear what she was saying. “Pull back,” Calli said. “Regroup inside the bowl. Have the archers dip their arrows in acid and aim for the catapult.”

Hoku felt dizzy. He looked around the room, at the piles of clamshells and fish bones scattered around the desktops. Days and days here, and he hadn’t helped a single person yet, while Calli was dealing with a war.

Calli’s face appeared close in his monitor. “I’ve got to go, but I’ll leave someone on this commbox at all times. Let me know the moment you learn something.”

He nodded, suddenly too ashamed to speak.

“Stay safe,” Calli said, and walked out of range of the camera.

Hoku was left staring at a strange Aviar he’d never seen before. She had dark skin and thin lips marred by a vertical scar on one side. She sat down in front of her monitor and nodded. “My name is Senator Melaine. If you have any messages or information for the acting president, you can give them to me.”

Acting president.
He shook his head. “Nothing right now. But I . . . I have things to do.”

Senator Melaine nodded and rustled her wings. “Then I will wait.”

Hoku rolled away from the monitor and told his Datastreamers to shut off the microphone. But not for long; he had work to do.

Calli hadn’t even noticed his eyes.

F
OR THE TENTH TIME
, Dash touched the hilts of the swords belted to his waist. Despite Odd’s insistence that he name them Hot and Cold, Dash had finally settled on Blaze and Shatter.

He had been practicing with them every chance he could get, and they were starting to feel like extensions of his body. Vachir had hated them at first, but now even she was used to the flames and the searing cold that the swords produced. Eventually, if Dash kept working, wielding Blaze and Shatter would feel as easy and effortless as playing with toys. His old sword instructor used to say that was the true sign that you had mastered a weapon.

After that night around the fire, the night Dash had finally told the truth, it had become just as easy and effortless to pretend he was part of Odd’s kludge. Because he
was
a part of it now, as strange as that seemed. And once they had made their decision, they were done. He had not witnessed a single moment of doubt from anyone, not Odd or Mags or Pocket or Squirrel.

Squirrel bounded up to his side. “You’re in love with those things,” she said, pointing to his swords. “Maybe you should try to be in love with people instead. At least they can love you back.”

Dash laughed and turned his head so she would not see the color rise to his face. Squirrel only meant to tease him, he was sure. It had become one of her favorite pastimes during the last week. But sometimes her jibes hit too close to his heart.

“And you?” he asked her. “Are you quick to give your heart to others?” She was not, as he knew well, but he enjoyed invoking her outrage. Aluna would like her very much. Vachir already did.

“Never giving my heart to anyone,” Squirrel said resolutely. “They’ll just stomp on it, and then I’ll have to bash in their head. Messy-messy.”

“That would indeed be sad,” Dash said. “But someday a person may surprise you. People are good at that.”

She blinked up at him, suddenly appearing as young as her age. He worried the girl was forming an unfortunate attachment to him, which he might need to address. But so far, she had not crossed any boundaries or gone too far in her jests.

“Don’t think I’d mind being surprised like that,” Squirrel said. “Someday, I mean. After we’ve got your folks back. Then maybe I’ll go looking for a surprise.”

“Oh, you cannot look for a surprise,” Dash said. “In fact, it usually finds you at the moment you are looking the least.” He thought about the SkyTek dome, about how a tiny creature had stolen his last apple and a minute later he was on the ground with a broken wrist and Aluna threatening to break even more.

As they drew closer to Strand’s army, they joined a steady stream of other kludges and lone Upgraders traveling the same way. Odd and Mags made friendly conversation with those that seemed open to it and asked if they had seen two Equian prisoners. So far, no one had.

The threat of attack from other kludges had diminished with the looming promise of war. No one wanted to start a skirmish and end up facing the army as punishment. Odd’s kludge had, possibly for the first time in its existence, the comfort of safety.

Unfortunately, no one they had met so far knew the whereabouts of Strand himself. Odd had been right — apparently only Strand’s trusted lieutenants had that information.

Which made it even more critical that Dash discover Strand’s hideout and find a way to transmit its location to Aluna, Hoku, and Calli in the HydroTek dome. His chest tightened at the thought of the three of them together, laughing, sharing meals, sharing stories.

Vachir walked next to him. He patted her on the withers. The two of them were doing well enough, but that did not stop him from missing the others. No one made him laugh like Hoku. No one made him believe in the inherent goodness of people like Calli. And there was simply no one in the world like Aluna.

“There you go again,” Squirrel said. “Dreaming about your swords.”

Dash smiled. “You know me so well.”

The thick forest had long ago given way to the rocky skirt of the mountain and smaller, tougher trees. The path they now walked was well-worn, perhaps an Upgrader thoroughfare of some sort. It was strange to think of the Upgraders developing trade routes, but they had. Unlike the LegendaryTek splinters, theirs was a world of travel and exploration, not isolation and defense. It was the harder path, and he admired them for it.

Odd returned from a conversation with another kludge and spoke with Mags. Dash watched their faces, the way they carried their bodies, the intensity of their voices. Mags glanced back once, but quickly turned to Odd when she saw Dash watching her.

So this was about him, then.

He touched the hilts of his blades, taking comfort in the smooth leather strips in which he had wrapped them to improve his grip. The last few days of safety had been a welcome change after so much uncertainty. He should have known it would not last.

“Please, excuse me,” he said to Squirrel. “I must speak with Odd and Mags.”

Squirrel followed his gaze. The girl was quick and could read situations better than almost anyone he knew. “Yeah, you do,” she said. “Luck.”

He nodded and whispered to Vachir. She whinnied and nudged him forward with her head.

“There’s good news and not-so-good news,” Mags said.

Odd snorted. “Crap news,” he said. “And worse-than-crap news.”

“I am ready for both,” Dash said.

His fathers might be dead. The idea had formed in his heart the moment he learned they had left Shining Moon. The seed had grown when he heard about their abduction by Upgraders. And now that seed had flowered into a vast tree of fear and doubt, its branches spread throughout his entire body.

“On the good side,” Odd said, “that ugly brute Grid says he saw — with his own shiny eyes — one of Strand’s head warriors use a bit of tech to talk to someone else, someone nowhere nearby, far as he could tell.”

“A portable commbox? That is good news!” Dash said. “We must find that warrior immediately. With that device, we could coordinate the movement of our own allied forces, assuming the Kampii, Equians, Aviars, and Serpenti are now using the devices they already have.”

“Get hold of yourself,” Mags said. “We aren’t walking up to Strand’s army and demanding they give us their tech, and I don’t care how good you’re getting with those swords. Can’t put us back together when the army cuts us to a gadzillion glittery shreds of flesh, can you?”

“Of course not,” Dash said quickly. “I only meant that the communication device is the key, and that we need to gain access to it.”

Odd scratched his mostly bald scalp, making his bundle of red hair twitch. “Well, then, here’s the problem, boy,” he said. “That wasn’t the only tidbit old Grid had for us. Traded a nice cutting knife to learn that he and his kludge also saw two of your horse folk handed off from one batch of their captors to another.”

“My fathers,” Dash said. The words came out of his mouth like whispers, so fragile he was afraid they might disappear.

Mags put a hand on his arm, and even with his heart racing and his mind reeling, he took note of it. Mags rarely touched anyone outside of tending to their wounds.

“They’re alive,” she said quietly. “Grid said one was limping, but hey, they have four legs, right? Could be worse. Thought it would be.”

“I did as well,” he said. He winced, though, thinking of his fathers wounded, being forced to march. They were brave enough, but not stupid or foolish. He could only hope that they managed to fight the fear and hopelessness a little longer. “We must find them and the comm device at once,” he said. “Every moment could mean the difference between their survival and us winning this war. Which direction do we go?”