Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) (16 page)

Ravan held his stare a moment, and then, to his surprise, in spite of the venom and the scorn in his voice, shook her head defiantly. The emotion in her eyes became anger. “You’re a
coward,
you know that? You repulse me, but I’m not giving up on you. I won’t, no matter what you say to me or how hard you try and push me away. I’m going to hound you until you’re the person I remember again, I will beat it out of you, I swear to God. You have exactly
no
choice in the matter.”

She yanked away from him and started moving, pushing through the crowd. Holt watched after her, and for the first time since Currency, he felt a slight twinge of emotion. Guilt maybe, or something fonder, he couldn’t be sure. He watched until she disappeared in the direction of the platform’s edge, and blended in with the rest of the Menagerie, and when she was gone, whatever he felt was covered up and buried just as quick.

*   *   *

MASYN PERCHED NEAR THE
top of one of the strange city’s giant towers. The flames whipped upward above, and she could feel the heat even over the intensity of the sun.

Castor was easy to spot, leaping up the tower opposite hers in flashes of yellow and purple, engaging the Menagerie on the platform over the giant arena in the very center.

Holt was harder to find, he blended in with the crowds, but eventually she spotted him, one of the few not running away. She admired the rebels’ strategy, leaping from those wires onto the platform, firing their primitive weapons. They had drive and fearlessness. She liked Holt’s strategy even more, walking into certain death, the grenades, willing to risk everything just to win.

Masyn smiled and decided she liked this Faust. It was dangerous. Unpredictable. Chaotic. She felt more at home here than she had felt anywhere since the Strange Lands, and it had only been a few minutes. She wondered what else this place had in store for her.

When the battle was over and the dark-haired pirate had finished with Holt, Masyn watched them all move off.

Castor and Holt had already gotten themselves in trouble, and there was little doubt it was a trend that would continue. Masyn would keep an eye on them, but, of course, that was the whole plan. Infiltrate the city and watch. She’d stay here until nightfall, then try her hand at that cable system connecting the strange towers, with their flames at the top. She wondered if she could run across the entire length of one.

12.
TIBERIUS

THE SPEAR POINT EXPLODED
through the armor plate in a shower of green sparks, and then hummed back through the air to Castor’s Lancet with a reverberating, harmonic ping. The plate was just under a foot thick, something from an old tanker ship, and the crystal punched through like it wasn’t even there.

Tiberius’s only reaction was the slight raise of an eyebrow, but it took a lot to impress him, and even more to generate a reaction. The power of the White Helix weaponry would be obvious to anyone. It was all but assured now: he would make the deal and Holt could finally get out of here.

They were at the top of the Command Pinnacle, where Tiberius’s private quarters rested. A large balcony overlooked all of Faust, and Holt tried not to think about where he was. Archer’s room had been just below this one.

“And the rings?” Tiberius asked, in his slowly thoughtful voice.

“Off the table,” Avril replied, standing next to Holt. “They’re too dangerous to use without training.”

Tiberius gave no indication whether that was acceptable or not. He simply beckoned for the Lancet in Castor’s hand, and the Helix studied him warily.

“That’s not appropriate,” Avril said, forcing herself to be civil. “A Helix never parts with his weapon. It’s a grave insult to even ask.”

Tiberius’s eyes slanted slightly toward his daughter. “I am to agree to a deal of this scope without even touching what you offer?”

Avril frowned, then, after a moment, nodded to Castor.

Slowly, he handed Tiberius the Lancet. It made Holt uneasy, seeing a weapon like that in the hands of Tiberius. But what did it matter? He would make the deal and be gone, and the Menagerie could do whatever they wished. He wouldn’t be around to see it.

“Each Lancet is unique,” Avril said. “The shaft is honed and shaped by its owner when they earn the right, from wood and materials they gather on a quest into—”

“Do you really see the Menagerie fighting this way?” Tiberius cut her off like she wasn’t even speaking, slowly twirling the weapon in his hands. “With spears?”

Holt expected the question. He spoke up, and when he did, the weapon seemed to spin faster in Tiberius’s hands. “It’s the crystal you should be interested in, that’s where the power is. It can be formed into pretty much any shape you want.”

“Like the tip of a bullet,” Tiberius said.

“Exactly.” Next to Holt, Avril closed her eyes. To her this was a nightmarish deal, but, like him, she had no real choice. They needed the Menagerie if they were going to save Zoey, and the weapons were their only real tradable commodity.

Holt and Castor had been led here by Ravan and then left in Tiberius’s quarters with Avril. The room was not what you might expect. It was comfortable, certainly, but completely absent of materialistic possessions. There was a bed, a dining table, chairs and a sofa, a workbench with tools, an entire wall full of shelves lined with books on technical and engineering subjects, and a drafting table, the wall around which was lined with blueprints and schematics of Faust and its original infrastructure.

The only thing that might count as an indulgence was a large, very old crossbow mounted to the wall near the bed. It was the only thing in the room whose purpose wasn’t immediately perceptible.

Besides Tiberius, there were two large guards, and a heavily muscled officer named Quade, who had a strange habit of looking at everything sideways. He wore an orange Taurus on his right hand, and his Menagerie star had seven of its star points filled in, marking him as an Overseer. Two silver .45 pistols were sheathed in double shoulder holsters under his arms. He was Tiberius’s master-at-arms, and Tiberius trusted his counsel on all military matters.

“Quade?” Tiberius asked, moving away with the Lancet. “Your thoughts?”

The boy seemed unimpressed. “It’s powerful, no doubt, but I’m not sure how we would mass-produce enough ammo for it to be worthwhile. From what I understand, it’s difficult and dangerous to shape these crystals.”

“The deal
includes
the ability to mass-produce this crystalline ammunition to our specifications, so that’s not an issue,” Tiberius observed. “There’s a bigger concern I was hoping you would see.”

Quade seemed impatient. “Which would be?”

“The Wind Traders. They’ve already entered into a bargain for this technology. If they adopt its use and we do not, the balance of power will shift. The ramifications of that I find troubling, and so should you.” For the first time since Tiberius had entered the room, he looked at Holt, the Lancet still spinning in his hands.

Holt stared back at him. It was strange, the lack of emotion. This encounter was something that had been building for a long time, but it, like everything else now, failed to move him.

“I heard what you did in the Handover Ward,” Tiberius said. “It was … surprising.”

“Time changes people, I guess,” Holt replied. He wasn’t sure he meant it, but it was what he figured Tiberius wanted to hear.

The Menagerie leader studied him a long moment, but there was no way to read his thoughts. “You
have
changed. You’re … harder now. Colder. You’ve been hurt, haven’t you?”

Before Holt could say anything, Avril cleared her throat. “I think we should get back to—”

Tiberius held up a hand to silence her, his eyes still on Holt. “Engineering has always been my passion. I used to be an engineer here—in fact, I helped design this facility back before it was Faust. Did you know that?”

Holt wasn’t surprised. Tiberius knew far too much about the inner workings of the structure, had played too prominent a role in the city’s construction, and there was no denying his mechanical genius. The Nonagon, for instance, was a work of horror, but the skill it took to design was unquestionable.

Tiberius tossed the Lancet to Quade and it hummed as it split the air. The big kid studied it skeptically when he caught it, testing its weight, still unimpressed.

“You’ve noticed the crossbow, certainly,” Tiberius said as he removed the ancient weapon from the wall. It was bigger than it had looked, almost as big as Tiberius himself, but he held it easily. “Do you know why I keep it? Why I find it relevant?”

Holt said nothing, he was growing tired of this show and tell. He wanted to be done here, to be on his way, but Tiberius just kept talking.

“Because it represents the
taking
of power,” the man said pointedly, as if it was meaningful. “One of the first accounts of a crossbow came from the Greek engineer Heron, of Alexandria. He described a weapon called the ‘Gastraphetes,’ a primitive crossbow, but it still could fire with far more energy than an arm-drawn hand-bow. Impressive, no doubt, but that wasn’t why it caused such a major shift in how wars were fought. What do you think the real reason was?”

The question, oddly, wasn’t directed at Holt or even Avril. Tiberius was asking Castor. It took a moment for the Helix to realize he was being addressed. When he did, he thought about it for a moment, then answered. “To use a bow requires years of specialized skill. But anyone can fire a crossbow, once it’s primed.”

A smile from Tiberius was a rare thing, but he wore one now. He seemed impressed. “Exactly. The crossbow was simple, cheap, and physically undemanding enough to be operated by large numbers of regular, conscripted soldiers, no matter how dim-witted. It shifted everything, and all because some ancient engineer sat down and thought of a way to overcome human limitation. I find that … inspiring.”

What happened next happened so quick, not even Castor’s honed instincts could save him.

There was a loud, vibrating pulse as the crossbow bolt fired and hit Castor in the shoulder, spinning him around and sending him to the floor.

Before he could get up, Quade swung the Lancet like a club into the Helix’s head and sent him rolling. He didn’t move after that. White Helix or not, when something as dense as an Antimatter crystal connects with your skull, you stay down. Holt looked at Castor’s limp body. It made so little sense, the suddenness of it, the shift from conversation to brutality, that he just stared in a daze.

Avril tensed—her reaction would have been lightning fast, were she given the chance—but Quade dropped the Lancet and drew both his sidearms in a blur and aimed them at Avril. So did the two burly guards near the door.

Avril froze, breathing hard and angry. She glared at her father. Clearly, this had all been planned.

“Without your silly little rings, girl, I don’t think you’re fast enough to dodge bullets,” Tiberius said as he knelt down to Castor, slowly plucking each of the rings off his fingers, being careful to keep them from touching one another. “But, if you try, Quade has orders to wound you. I would prefer to avoid that, your safety means a great deal to me.”

“What are you
doing
?” she asked through clenched teeth.

“During China’s Han Dynasty,” Tiberius calmly told her, “the emperor’s army had no crossbows. Their neighbors, the Xiongnu, had invented the weapon for themselves and refused to trade it, no matter what the Emperor offered. They knew that by doing so, they gave away their only military advantage. So the Emperor invaded Xiongnu, and took the technology for himself. He then went on to conquer most of Asia at the time.”

Avril didn’t seem to care much for her father’s history lesson. “This deal was—”

“Irrelevant. If you had listened to anything I just said, you would see that. True power is always
taken,
never bargained for. It is our way. We will
take
from the White Helix what we want. There will be no ‘deal.’”

“I swear,” Avril began, barely controlling her rage. “I will fight and—”

“And die, yes.” Tiberius stood and moved to the drafting table, setting the rings on it, watching them glow. Then he hung the crossbow back up onto its spot on the wall. “You said so before. But why?”

“These are my friends.” Avril seemed stunned. “Castor is my brother, you have no idea what we’ve—”

“
Your brother is dead!
” Tiberius roared so loudly it shook the room.

The sound snapped Holt back to reality, even Avril took a step back. It was the only time Holt had ever heard Tiberius raise his voice, and that in itself made it shocking. When he spoke again, the usual calmness had returned, but it was laced with heat. “These ‘friends’ of yours, this one in particular, did any of them tell you the
truth
? Did they tell you
who
killed Archer?”

Holt could see where this was about to go, the path Tiberius had intended it to take from the beginning, probably even before he’d arrived. He needed Avril, for her to rejoin the Menagerie, but she loathed him. What was needed was a way to make her question her loyalties. Even for Tiberius it was brilliant.

“Tell her, Holt,” Tiberius said, turning around, staring at him with the full rage and hatred he no longer needed to conceal. “Tell her the truth. It would mean so much more coming from you.”

Avril looked at Holt, and he saw it behind her eyes, could see her putting the pieces together, deducing what he was about to say. The emotion there almost seemed to plead with him not to. What did it matter now, Holt thought. The deal was finished, there had never really been one. It was all a ruse to lure him back with Avril and it had done its job gloriously.

“It was me,” Holt said—and when he did he saw a little bit of the light in Avril’s eyes snuff out. “I shot him, right below here in his room. I did it, and no one else.”

He could have tried to explain, to say what Archer had been about to do, but there was no real point. Oddly, the words felt good to say, not just because he was, in a way, unloading some kind of burden, but because he knew by saying them that he was sealing his fate, that it would all mercifully be over soon. He wouldn’t have to pretend anymore.