The Severed Tower (34 page)

The flashing of Antimatter lightning flared outside through the broken remains of the gymnasium walls. Everything beyond them seemed barren and lifeless.

“What happened here, Mira?” Holt asked softly.

Mira exhaled a long breath. Why not tell him? He deserved to know who he was traveling with. “To be a Freebooter you have to pass a trial. Mine was to go to a place called the Mix Master, in the second ring. It’s a Gravity Well, but different than Polestar’s.”

Of course, Polestar and its Gravity Well no longer existed, did they? Mira tried to ignore the thoughts, kept talking.

“Ben was there, too,” she said. “So were Echo and Deckard, and others. I had this plan to beat the Anomaly. I was only ten then, but still really impressed with myself.” She paused, the memories and the guilt all coming back. “A group of people decided to follow my plan. And…”

“They died,” Holt finished for her.

“Most of them. Not all. Echo survived. So did Ben. But not the rest. And it was my fault. They followed me, and they’re not here anymore, same as Zoey.”

Holt studied her. “These people. You made them come with you?”

Mira sighed. “It’s not that simple.”

“It was their choice, sounds like, and whatever your plan was, it couldn’t have been all that bad.
You
survived it, didn’t you? Maybe they just weren’t as good as you. That’s not your fault, either.”

“I survived because of Ben,” Mira whispered. “I couldn’t have been a Freebooter without him. Hell, far as Deckard and a few others were concerned, I never should have been.”

“But you made it this far
without
any of them. Didn’t you?” Holt asked. “Why do you keep discounting everything you’ve done? It’s like all you can see is the negative.”

Mira turned to him, unable to find an argument, but also unable to bring herself to agree. He was right. Why
was
it so hard for her?

“The Arc is entering meditation.” A sharp voice made them jump. The small girl, the White Helix leader, stood almost on top of them, still sweating from the morning training. Behind her the other Helix had disbanded. Neither Holt nor Mira had noticed her approach. It was disconcerting.

“Well,” Holt replied, “thanks for the update.”

The girl’s stare didn’t waver. “After meditation we leave for Sanctum. We’ll get there tonight, if they haven’t resettled.”

“Who
are
you?” Mira asked.

“My name’s Avril,” the girl said, and Mira remembered the Forlorn Passage, how Ravan seemed to recognize the girl. “I am the Doyen of the twenty-seventh Arc of the White Helix. And I
had
been given the honor of returning the Prime to Sanctum, but that … isn’t going to happen anymore, is it?” Her voice was bitter. That “honor,” it seemed, was something she valued, but Mira felt no sympathy for her.

Avril balanced on one end of her Lancet. Where the sharpened, red spear point touched the tattered wooden floorboards, a thin trail of smoke began to rise. The crystal was burning through it, a testament to its power, and Holt studied the effect curiously.

“Can you … shoot those things?” he asked.

Mira’s eyes moved to the Lancet. The weapons were infamous, even outside the Strange Lands. In a world of high alien technology and low-rent firearms from the World Before, the Lancet was an enigma. Ornate and well crafted, no two were exactly alike, but they were all the same in design. Long, close to five feet in length, with their colorful spear points of glowing Antimatter crystals. Avril’s was made of dark cherrywood bound together with silver metal casings that contrasted each other like ice and fire. The spear point on the floor was red, while the one at the other end glowed green. A double helix was etched in white on either end of the weapon, both worn smooth from use.

Holt’s question was spurred by one of the Lancet’s most unique features, the dual hand grips and triggers on either side.

In answer, Avril spun and raised the Lancet in a blur, sighting down it like a rifle. There was a click as she pulled the trigger closest to her—and the crystal exploded from the end with a loud, strangely harmonic ping.

It ripped the air like a missile, and punched straight through the faded, black eye of a huge yellow jacket—the old school’s mascot, most likely—on the far wall in a burst of red sparks, leaving nothing but a smoking hole.

“Huh.” Holt studied the hole in the wall with a mix of fascination and skepticism. “Nice, but, seems to me, not all that practical. I mean, with only two shots, you’d better make them count, right?”

Avril pressed the glowing red Antimatter ring on her middle finger against a similar glowing crystal on the weapon’s shaft. There was a spark and a rumbling from the distance. Then the same wall from before exploded outward in a shower of debris as the spear point burst
back through
it.

Avril’s eyes found the projectile, raising her Lancet up and around. Another strange, harmonic ping ripped the air as the crystal slammed back into the end of the Lancet. Avril dispersed the inertia from the impact in a spin that landed her in low, agile crouch.

When it was done, she looked up at Holt and Mira.

“I … stand corrected,” Holt remarked.

But while the show was definitely impressive, it only reinforced Mira’s confusion about something. “It’s never made sense to me,” she said. “Why train for that? Why train so hard, way back in the deepest parts of the Strange Lands, where the only thing you run into is the occasional Freebooter?”

“I’ve asked the same question.” Avril slowly stood back up. “We all have. Gideon says we will know when we are ‘strong’ enough—and we grow stronger every day.”

Mira could hear the frustration in Avril’s voice, and she understood. All that training, the development of skills, without any outlet to really use them. She saw the fall of Polestar again, remembered the White Helix leaping and riding the wreckage to the ground in bursts of color, yelling in excitement. At the time it had felt insane, but now she saw it was a release. The White Helix were caged panthers, Mira realized, eager to expend their formidable energy. It made them even more dangerous than they already were.

“But you can ask Gideon himself,” Avril continued. “You’ll meet him soon enough. Though I can’t say you’re all that important anymore. The Prime will reach Sanctum some other way, I suppose.”

Mira sat up. “You know she’s alive?”

“I can feel her. Everywhere. The Pattern moves whenever she moves.”

“What does that mean?” Holt asked.

“Everything here is tied together,” Avril said. “The Anomalies, the artifacts, the earth. The Strange Lands is all one thing now, blended together into something we call the Pattern; but we are separate from it, you and I, because we do not belong. We can sense it, we can avoid it, even dance and spin through it, but that’s all. The Prime, though …
belongs.
When she moves, the Pattern ripples around her like water after a stone’s throw. I’ve … never felt anything like it.” Avril’s voice was full of wonder—and something else. Fear, it sounded like. Mira wondered just what kind of mythology the White Helix had built up around Zoey, and why.

Holt jumped in surprise as someone grabbed him by the wrist. A tall White Helix, handsome, powerful but lean, with long, wavy hair. Like Avril before, no one had seen him coming. Holt struggled, but the Helix simply twisted his arm and pinned him facefirst onto the floor.

“Hey!” Mira shouted as she moved to get up, but more hands shoved her back down and kept her in place. The rest of the White Helix had surrounded them.

“Dane!” Avril yelled in anger.

Holt groaned as Dane pushed him harder against the floor, holding his right wrist, twisting it painfully so Avril could see what was there. The half-finished tattoo of a black bird, an image that marked him as something many people didn’t like very much. Mira stared at the image and felt cold. She remembered Ravan’s words.
We were much more than friends …

“He’s Menagerie!” Dane told Avril.
“Look!”

Dane had lowered himself to a crouch, instead of centering his balance on his knees. It was a mistake. Holt had been in enough fight-or-die situations to develop his own instincts, and he lashed out and swept Dane’s left foot completely off the floor. The Helix lost his balance and tumbled backward with wide eyes.

Holt twisted around, and when he did his fist connected hard with Dane’s jaw and sent him crashing down. The Lancet burst from Dane’s hands and skittered toward Mira. She grabbed and aimed it at the boy. She might not know how to fire it, but she could definitely thrust it forward.

The other Lancets around them all pointed at her and Holt, but it didn’t matter now, and she and Dane both knew it. They might kill them—but Dane would die first. She kept the blue glowing spear point at his throat.

“You think that’s the first time someone’s pinned my arm?” Holt asked sourly, staring back at Dane. “You guys really
have
been out here too long.”

Out the corner of her eye, past all the humming spear points, Mira noticed one odd thing. Avril’s Lancet wasn’t raised. She just stared at the charged situation around her.

“Stand down. Everyone,” she said with slow, pointed words that dripped with anger.

“But—” one of them started. Avril kicked outward in a blur of motion, her body covered in bright white light. The boy towered over the small girl, but he went flying backward as if he weighed nothing, and slammed to the ground. The others stared at her warily.

“I am Doyen,” Avril’s voice was ice, “and it displeases me to repeat myself. Stand down.
Now.
”

The others immediately lowered their Lancets and took two steps back, but their eyes stayed on Holt and Mira. So did Dane’s.

“Dane,” Avril said slowly. “Apologize for your actions.”

“What?”
The boy’s eyes shifted to Avril’s. There was shock in them. “Avril—”

At the use of her first name, Avril’s stare turned to pure heat. Her voice was barely audible. “
What
did you call me?”

The anger in Dane’s face dropped away immediately. He looked down, clearly aware of some grievous transgression. “Forgive me, Doyen. I … forget myself.”

Calling Avril by her first name apparently was a violation of some rule, and her reaction showed it was a bad one to break. But he hadn’t just used her name, Mira noticed. He’d used it with
familiarity.
He was used to calling her that, it was obvious, and it made her wonder about the relationship between Dane and Avril when they were alone, and whether or not
that
was against the rules, too.

“You have dishonored this Arc,” Avril spoke with venom. “You have attacked a helpless enemy without provocation, and, more importantly, you have lost your weapon to the hands of that enemy. You will apologize to both of them and when you are done, you will spend your meditation period and the
entire
trek to Sanctum practicing walking Spearflow. Maybe that will help you learn to hold your Lancet with a tighter grip. Do you understand?”

Dane forced himself to look at Holt and Mira, the glowing, pointed end of his own Lancet still aimed at his throat. “I … apologize for attacking you. It was dishonorable, and shameful to myself, my Arc, and my Doyen.”

Holt and Mira glanced at one another, unsure.

“Ask the Freebooter if she will give you your weapon back,” Avril told him.

Dane looked sharply up again. Avril stared back coldly. “You look surprised. Have you forgotten
all
your oaths, or just this one? You have committed
ai-Katana.
Your weapon now belongs to your enemy. She can keep it if she wishes. It is her right, but that will be the end of your honor.”

There was a slight hint of pain in Avril’s words. A glimpse of feeling that only another girl would notice. Mira’s suspicions about her and Dane were all but confirmed. It hurt Avril to punish him this way, but she had no choice. She was a leader. She had responsibilities beyond her own feelings, and the revelation stirred something in Mira. Images of the Mix Master flashed in her mind.

Perhaps she and Avril weren’t all that different.

Dane’s gaze slowly shifted back to Mira. She saw a mixture of emotions there. Shame, anger, fear. “Freebooter, my weapon is yours,” he said slowly. “May I … have it back?” The words, it was clear, were incredibly painful for him to say.

Mira looked at Holt. He just shrugged. Her choice.

She held the Lancet against Dane’s throat a moment longer—then handed it to him. Dane slowly took it and stood up. The tension in the gymnasium began to release.

“Spearflow,” Avril said tightly. “Now. The rest of you will do double meditation to ponder and learn from Dane’s mistakes.”

Dane turned and moved away without argument. So did the others. Avril, however, stared at Mira and Holt. “I apologize for Dane. He is … passionate. It’s his weakness,” she told them. “We have that in common, Gideon says.”

“Passionate’s … definitely a good word for it,” Holt replied, rubbing his wrist.

Mira saw the girl’s eyes drift downward to the unfinished tattoo. “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes,” Holt said.

Avril nodded, her stare hardened. “Archer’s dead. Isn’t he?”

At the words, Holt stiffened. “Yes.”

Avril’s eyes never left the tattoo on Holt’s wrist, but they filled with some kind of deep, complicated emotion. Mira had no idea who Archer was, but Avril had certainly known him, and her feelings on the matter were conflicted. “Did he … die well?”

“I wish I could say he did,” Holt answered, and there was something dark in his voice.

Avril’s grip on her Lancet tightened. “It doesn’t matter. The Menagerie will
not
have me. My place is here.”

“You have my word,” Holt said back carefully, “I am not here for you, and I am
not
Menagerie.”

Avril held his stare a moment more, then turned and moved off toward the others. Mira watched the girl walk away, finally feeling her pulse starting to calm. “What was that all about?”

“Avril is the reason Ravan and her men are here,” Holt answered. “They’re trading whatever they’re carrying in that crate for her.”