Shadowstorm (Sorcery and Science Book 6) (31 page)

“It’s the best I can do. We’re flying against the wind,” Marin said. “I’m sure your friend will wait for you.”

“He will. I’m more worried about the mere hour I have to figure out what to tell him.” He pulled his backpack out of a side compartment, then sat down next to Davin. “We have all the pieces now. I just don’t know what they mean. What do a bunch of Xenen artifacts have to do with the destruction of Hope and the rest of the Rev isles? What did the Varenese want with one of the pieces? And how does Lady Cassandra even fit into all of this?”

“Give the bag to Marin. She’s just the person to solve your puzzle,” Ariella told him.

Everett handed the bundle of artifacts over to Marin, whose eyes lit up.

She hopped over the back of her chair, calling out, “Take the controls, Leo.”

“Good idea.” He slid over. “We wouldn’t want you to get us stuck in a tree.”

“There are no trees here. We’re over water.”

“Last time you flew an airship over a body of water, you still managed to find a tree to get it stuck in.”

“That was a model airship, not a real one.”

He nodded his head and smiled.

“And it was over three years ago.”

His fingertips danced against one another in rapid delight.

“Anywaaay,” Marin said, drawing out the last syllable. “Let’s take a look at what we’ve got here.”

One by one, she pulled the artifacts out of the bag and set them down on the long windowsill beside her. By the time the bag was empty, the windowsill was spilling over—and Marin was very, very happy.

“Xenen tech. In my hands,” she squealed with excitement. “I’ve seen some before, of course, but only at museums, where it was locked away behind glass. This is only the second time I’ve seen it up close.” She held up a piece for closer examination. “Back at Orion Explosives, like a year or so ago, the Diamond Edges sent over some sort of shield they wanted to have replicated. But that wasn’t really the company’s area of expertise. The long-timers got to have a crack at it, but none of them could figure it out. I wanted to have a go too, but my boss sent it back to the Diamond Edges with a note that since it couldn’t easily be made into an explosive, it should rather go to a different company or a military research unit.”

Marin was talking so fast that Ariella could barely follow.

“He sent it away! A piece of technology centuries old and yet still centuries ahead of us. I’d hardly had the chance to touch it, and then he sent it off to who knows where. He should have given me a chance. I could have figured it out.”

“I believe you,” Everett said. “You were able to make bombs out of gardening equipment. I’m convinced you could make a bomb out of anything.”

“You’re probably right.” Marin began to connect the pieces together. “Well, now it doesn’t matter. Now, I get a chance at assembling this device. That is way better than taking something apart. Anyone can do that. But to put something together…” She turned a piece around in her hand. “Hmm. That’s weird.”

“What’s weird?” Everett asked her.

She didn’t answer. She slid the piece into place, then worked in silence for several more minutes before declaring, “Done.”

Ariella leaned over for a peek. The completed device looked a whole lot like an Elition sand slate—or the technological version of one, anyway.

“What is it?” Everett asked.

“A communication device,” said Marin with undiluted certainty.

Everett stroked his scruffy chin in thoughtful circles. “What did Lady Cassandra want with a Xenen communication device?”

Leonidas looked over his shoulder. “Maybe she wanted to invite them over for milk and cookies.”

“And what does this have to do with the Revs?” Everett continued.

“Nothing?” Marin said. “Maybe they just happened to get a hold of something Lady Cassandra misplaced. And then she…” Marin looked at Ariella. “You said your friend Terra had some sort of past vision of Lady Cassandra?”

“Yes. Terra saw Lady Cassandra tell Aaron the Selpes needed someone to blame for the attack on Decia. Aaron figured out she meant the Revs, and then he went to speak to…”

“Me,” Davin said bleakly. “He told me the Selpes would start killing Elitions next. I talked to Ambrose Selpe. I convinced him to blame the Revs.” He looked at Everett. “This is all my fault.”

Everett stared at him for a long time—so long that Ariella started to get worried. If Everett pulled a weapon on Davin, she’d intervene. She wouldn’t let him kill the man she loved, even though he’d made a horrible mistake.

“Did you tell the emperor to bomb the Revs?” Everett finally said, his voice low and hard.

“No. I just hinted that he could blame them,” replied Davin. “Ambrose Selpe knew just as well as I did that the Revs didn’t destroy Decia. And considering his long reputation of inaction when it came to the Revs, I figured he’d just make a stupid speech and then be done with it. That’s what he told me he’d do. Something must have changed between the time we spoke and his public declaration of vengeance.”

“That something was probably Lady Cassandra or someone attached to her,” Ariella said.

Everett’s eyes remained fixed on Davin. “I believe you. But your intentions don’t absolve you of your guilt.”

“Lady Cassandra wanted to get her hands back on the pieces of this device. To do that, she had the Selpes attack the Revs. One way or another, she was going to see to it that the Rev isles were attacked,” Marin said.

“And therefore all should be forgiven? Just like that?” Everett demanded, his anger spilling into his words.

“No,” Leonidas said, his face drawn down in remorse. “It shouldn’t. I’ve been there.” He looked at Davin. “I’ve been you.”

“What did you do?”

“I distracted the Selpe soldiers in Lear while the Avans snuck Hayden and Ian Selpe through the city. What I did wasn’t just treason; it was wrong. There’s no getting around that fact. Why I did it…” His gaze drifted to Marin.

“Why did you really do it?” she asked.

“Later.” He turned back to Davin. “Whatever my reasons, I should have found another way. But I didn’t. Now I have to live with what I did, every day doing all that I can to make up for it, all the while knowing that I never can.”

“You’re right,” Davin said quietly. “For my role in this, I don’t deserve to be forgiven.”

“No, you don’t,” Everett told him. “You’re both right about that.” He lifted the Xenen device in his hands. “But Marin is also right. Lady Cassandra would have made it happen anyway. Let’s deal with that problem. Ariella, you can put away your sword now. I promise not to shoot him.”

Ariella slid her Serenity back into its sheath. The draw had been so automatic, so immediate. Determination streamed through the bond she shared with Davin, mixing with the guilt. He’d taken Leonidas’s words to heart. He wanted to make up for that past wrong. And she was going to help him do just that.

“So Lady Cassandra wanted the Selpes to attack the Revs as a cover while she sent her people in to retrieve the artifacts?” Ariella asked.

“I think so,” said Marin.

“But why?” asked Everett. “What does she want with a Xenen communication device?”

“To communicate with the Xenens,” Davin said, his words so raw, they cut straight through Ariella.

“No, they’re gone. We expelled them five centuries ago. And there’s been no evidence of their presence since,” she protested, a headache mounting behind her eyes.

“Are you so sure?” said Davin. “What about the Elition experiments the Selpes and Avans are running? The Xenens did the very same thing back then. And now we find out Lady Cassandra had the means to communicate with the Xenens.”

Ariella’s head felt like it would implode under the pressure. Her legs had gone limp. “Over such a distance? We don’t even know where they are, only that they were banished to another world.”

“Cameron found a sand slate Lady Cassandra had hidden inside the Treasury at Sundrop Loop. It was with one of the artifacts,” Everett said. “He said the missing part of the pair was somewhere so far away, he didn’t even recognize the place. What if the Xenens have it?”

“I don’t think that device can work across worlds,” Ariella said. “Sand slates sure can’t. If the two pieces in a set are far enough away from each other on this world, they can’t even link. The only way I know around that is to use a portal to—”

“Did you say a portal?” Marin asked.

“Yes. It’s a weird magical effect,” Davin said. “A sand slate has a range, just like your radios. It’s a big range, about the size of a continent. But say you want to talk to someone on another continent. You stand beside a portal to that continent, and then it’s like your sand slate is there on the other end. You don’t even have to step through the portal. For as long as you’re standing next to it, you can reach the person with the paired sand slate. We use it all the time at Laelia. When we want to communicate with the kingdoms on the Western Continent, we simply step inside the Gateway and use one of the three sand slates paired to the kingdom rulers of the Tundra, Everlast, and Sunset Tail.”

Marin took the device from Everett and held it up. “This is the technological equivalent of a sand slate. And I’d bet you my Windcannon-4 RC model that this portal trick works in exactly the same way.”

“I’m not going to take that bet.” Ariella didn’t even know what a Windcannon was. “But there’s one problem with your theory: there are no portals to the Xenens’ world. After they were banished, that portal was sealed. No one even knows how to make normal portals anymore, let alone ones that connect to other worlds.”

“Are you so sure?” Marin asked her. “We encountered an interworld portal just a few months ago.”

“The one that took Silas and the Selpe brothers?” Ariella asked. “That wasn’t magic.”

“Neither is this.” Marin nodded toward the device. “This tech sand slate has something else in common with that portal: they are both of Hellean design.”

Everett took it back from her and began to scrutinize its every dip and curve. “It looks Xenen to me.”

“Yes, it does. But I’ve seen Xenen tech. And I’ve seen Hellean tech. This is Hellean tech made to look Xenen. You can tell by the…oh, never mind. The differences are minor, but they are there, if you just know what to look for. If I can just find it…” She dug through the pouches attached to her belt. “Ah, here it is.” She held up a metal cylinder the size of a matchstick. “When we were sabotaging Blizzard’s Point, I swiped this from a Hellean supply barrel.”

Leonidas snickered. “When during that madness did you have time to go hunting for toys?”

“Never mind that. The point is, this…” She held the cylinder up to the device. “…fits in here. I think it’s the power source. The Helleans had barrels full of these batteries.”

“So why don’t you put it in to see if it turns on?” Leonidas asked.

“Because I don’t want to die,” Marin said. “Lady Cassandra is looking for this. She wanted it back so badly that she had thousands of people killed to get it. Chances are pretty good it has a tracker on it—and that it will shout out its location the moment we turn it on.” She tucked the cylinder back into the pouch where she’d found it. “So, no, we aren’t going to do that.”

“Are you saying the Helleans built this device to communicate with the Xenens through a weird tech portal like the one we saw?” Ariella asked.

“I’m saying that it’s suddenly really obvious why the Helleans are technologically decades—or even centuries—ahead of everyone else. They built gravity-defying cities in the sky, for goodness sake. The Xenens told them how to build that tech. They must have.”

“Lady Cassandra is not an Avan spy. She’s playing them just as she played the Selpes. She’s working with the Helleans,” said Davin.

“But why?” Everett asked. “What are they planning?”

“To bring the Xenens back,” Davin said. “They want to bring the Xenens back.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

~
The Pancake Palace ~

527AX January 19, Seastone

THE AIRSHIP COASTED into Seastone without so much as a hiccup, which was remarkably lucky considering both the madness of the last twenty-four hours and the fact that Davin had stolen the vessel from that very dock. Everett still wasn’t sure what he was going to do about Davin. The kid—for that was what he was—had made a mistake. But this wasn’t the typical Dad-I-crashed-your-car sort of oops that other twenty-year-olds excelled at. His mistake was, for lack of a better word, epic. His actions had led to the destruction of the Rev isles.

Everett understood the fears that had led him to that point; any time something unthinkable happened, everyone wanted to blame the Elitions. He also believed Davin when he said he’d expected the Selpes to merely shake their fists at the Revs, then go back to ignoring them just as they had for the previous two decades. Everett even believed that he felt bad about it now. The problem was this wasn’t the sort of thing a few sorries could wash away.

Everett had rescued Davin from the Avans, and only hours later, the Elition prince had turned around and gotten the Revs bombed. That shouldn’t have stung, not after all he’d lived through, not after all the ugliness he’d seen in people—but it did. Jason had forgiven Terra. Ariella had forgiven Leonidas. Maybe someday Everett would forgive Davin. Just not today. And definitely not until he’d done something to earn it.

Everett was the first one off the airship. He climbed down the ladder—and was surprised to find Jax waiting there for him. As always, the half-Elition looked like the quintessential surfer. Golden-blond streaked with jade and sapphire, his shoulder-length hair lay over a skin-tight, teal-green surfing top. His feet were naked, his shorts baggy, and his eyes covered by an enormous pair of sunglasses.

“Everett,” Jax said, patting him on the shoulder. “I was sorry to hear about the Rev isles, man.” He moved past Everett to Ariella, who had just hopped off the ladder. “And you.” He hugged her. “Why is it whenever you and Everett are working together, you are either fleeing danger or running straight into the thick of it?”

“Just the way of the world, I suppose,” she replied. “It’s nice to see you again, Jax. Thanks for coming to meet us.”