Archon (12 page)

“I’m so glad to see you using your hands for things like this,” Gevri said. “I wondered if people in Nathan’s City used dominion for everyday stuff like eating, drinking, and brushing hair. That’s obviously not true.”

Amma froze for a moment, her eyes locked with Taemon’s. Gevri thought she had psi. And why wouldn’t he? They hadn’t told him about the Fall, nor had they explained about the powerless colony. In all the excitement and confusion last night, they hadn’t even thought about Gevri expecting to see them using psi!

“So, you don’t like using dominion to eat?” Amma said cautiously. Her movements were slow and self-conscious as she laid out the food.

“It’s just so weird,” Gevri said.

“What’s so weird about it?” Taemon asked, moving to help Amma with the food. Her shoulders relaxed a bit when he was beside her, which made him feel good.

“We’re trained to use dominion for warfare, and nothing else,” Gevri explained. “It’s too sacred for mundane tasks. Using dominion for things like eating, drinking, or ordinary everyday lifting is considered profane.”

“Wait,” Taemon said. “It’s not okay to use your sacred power to eat, but it’s okay to use it for war? How is hurting people sacred?”

Gevri seemed taken aback. “In the Republik, there’s nothing more sacred than war. It’s defending your home, your family, your gods. Nothing is more sacred than that.”

“That’s so . . . different,” Amma said slowly.
Different
was an understatement!

Gevri reached into his bag and produced some round, grainy baked disks. “It’s what we know. War has become our culture, our industry, our education. Everything centers on war.”

“So why are you leaving?” Taemon asked. “There is no war in Deliverance — I mean, Nathan’s City.”
At least, not yet.

“The army has taken things too far. They’re not just defending anymore. My father especially. He . . . Well, let’s just say I feel I have more in common with the peaceful people of Nathan’s City than I do with my father.”

“Let’s eat,” Taemon said. “With or without dominion.”

Amma handed out the food. Gevri offered them some of his baked disks.

“These are delicious!” Amma said, smiling with her mouth full. “What are they?”

“They’re called samkins,” Gevri said. “My mother used to make them.”

Taemon could sense that there was more to that comment, but before he could ask, the jaguar strolled into the campsite and sat down next to Gevri.

Taemon edged away. “You should have told me your jaguar was an archon.”

Amma swallowed the last of her samkin. “That’s ridiculous. How can an animal have psi?”

“I don’t know,” Taemon said. “But that cat can do some really bizarre things.”

“You still call it psi?” Gevri said.

“Yes,” Taemon said, wondering at the word
still.
“But none of our animals has it. Of course, we’re not a nation of warmongers.”

Gevri gave Taemon a cold glare. “You shouldn’t speak of things you know nothing about.”

Amma looked at the jaguar. “I think she’s beautiful.”

“You can pet her if you like,” Gevri said. “She doesn’t mind.”

Taemon huffed. “I’d rather pet a shark.”

But Amma walked over and scratched the cat between its ears. “We’re all friends now, aren’t we?”

Not exactly,
thought Taemon, eyeing both the cat and its master.

After breakfast, Gevri went off with Jix to “have a look around.” He wanted to be sure his father hadn’t sent soldiers after him.

“I don’t trust him,” Taemon said as soon as Gevri was out of sight.

“Why not?” asked Amma, sounding genuinely perplexed.

“Don’t you think it’s a little
convenient
that a disgruntled solider should happen to decide to run away to Deliverance the very day you and I arrive in the Republik?”

Amma frowned. “But no one knew we were coming. What else could it be
but
a coincidence?”

But Taemon had thought about this. “How do we know these archons only have the one form of psi?” he asked, whispering now even though Gevri was long gone. “What if one of them is like Challis and saw us coming?”

“No,” Amma said doubtfully. “Gevri would have mentioned such a power.”

“Not if he’s working for them! Think about it: How did Gevri know about the tunnel? And what has he really told us about my da? This could all be some sort of trap, to lure us into a false sense of security.”

Amma started packing away her bedroll. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Let’s just pretend for a minute that you’re right. So what’s the trap? He’s heading to the city, and we’re heading to the military outpost. We would have done that even if we’d never met him.”

“Just because we can’t see his plan doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one,” Taemon argued, but even he had to admit that he was sounding a bit paranoid now. “I’d just feel a whole lot better if we didn’t let Gevri out of our sight.”

“Looks like you’re about to get your wish,” Amma said, nodding toward the top of a hill. “Here he comes now.”

They watched as Gevri and Jix raced down the hill, looking for all the world like a kid playing with his pet.

“Beautiful morning!” Amma called brightly.

“Yeah.” Gevri pulled a flask from his waistband and took a generous gulp of water. “It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day. Perfect for travel.”

Taemon and Amma exchanged a look.

“Why don’t you come with us?” Amma blurted out.

“What?”

“Come with us to the outpost. We could really use your help sneaking in.”

Gevri shook his head. “You saw the soldiers my father sent. If I go back, they’ll kill me. Or try to force me to be a soldier. And I won’t be a soldier.”

“Your father sent those soldiers?” Amma asked.

“To him, I’m a traitor.” Gevri’s mouth tightened. “I don’t know how things are on your side of the mountain, but in the Republik, there’s nothing worse than a traitor.”

Taemon thought about the iron rule of Elder Naseph before the Fall, about being banished to the powerless colony. Perhaps Deliverance and the Republik were more alike than anyone realized.

“That’s okay,” Taemon said, trying to sound a little too relieved. “We can go on our own. We can just ask around until we find the archon trainees. We’ll be fine.”

Gevri rolled his eyes. “You can’t just walk into a military outpost and ask around. They’ll arrest you. Besides, even if you
do
manage to sneak into the outpost, you’ll never find the archons on your own. They’re the best-kept secret in the Republik. If your da really is with them, you have no chance of finding him.”

“All the more reason why we need you,” Amma said.

Gevri opened his mouth to argue, but Amma cut him off. “If you’ll help us find Taemon’s father, we’ll help you get to Deliverance.”

“I know where Nathan’s City is,” said Gevri. “Just on the other side of this mountain.”

Amma raised one eyebrow. Taemon was glad not to be on the receiving end of that look. “Knowing which side of the mountain it’s on is hardly the same thing as knowing how to get there. It’s much more rugged on our side of the mountain. There are lots of dead-end canyons and dangerous drop-offs. We almost had to turn back more than once.”

“And there’s snow,” Taemon added. “It’s colder on the Deliverance side than it is here.”

Gevri rubbed his hand across his jaw, deliberating. “So if I help you find your father, you’ll escort me to Nathan’s City — to Deliverance?”

Taemon hesitated. Would he and Amma really be willing to make good on their promise, to expose the vulnerability of Deliverance to their sworn enemy? Even if that enemy helped them find Taemon’s da?

Taemon took a deep breath and then nodded. “Once we find my da, we’ll take you with us back to Deliverance.”

It wasn’t that far from the tunnel to the edge of the outpost. It wouldn’t have taken them two days to get there if they’d gone directly, but Gevri thought it best to wend their way through the wilderness in order to avoid run-ins with soldiers. Taemon couldn’t argue with that.

The jaguar traveled with them, sometimes disappearing into the brush, sometimes padding along next to Gevri.

“Where does she go?” Amma asked.

Gevri shrugged. “She checks everything out, on the lookout for anything dangerous. Sometimes she hunts.”

The cat still made Taemon uneasy, but he knew better than to bring that up again. Instead, he felt it was high time he asked the most burning question: “How exactly are there archons in the Republik? I thought the Republikites feared psi — or dominion, as you call it. That’s why Nathan put up the mountain.”

“Most people
are
afraid of dominion. They don’t like the idea of people doing things with their minds. They think it’s evil, or spooky at the very least, and want nothing to do with it.

“But my father is different. He thinks dominion will be the ultimate military weapon. Father studied everything he could about psi, which he called
dominion
because he wanted to differentiate it from Nathan’s powers. He’d studied weapon science at university and combined all of that knowledge into an experimental program: me.”

“You were an experiment?” Amma asked.

Gevri turned to the jaguar. “Jix and I both. I also happened to be his son, an infant at the time. He raised me to believe that I had these powers. Apparently, that’s all it takes.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Taemon said defensively. “Children have the unique ability to acquire psi, but they must be raised knowing that psi is possible. If your father was able to convince you of this without any examples to show you, he must be an incredible teacher.”

Gevri nodded. “I was isolated from other children until I was thirteen years old. My father didn’t want me to realize that other kids didn’t have dominion. He feared it might make me give up on my own powers. Father doesn’t have psi himself, but when I was very young, he made it look like he did, so that I would grow up thinking certain things were possible. He’s become an expert on such things.”

“What about Jix?” Amma asked. “Does your father know that she has dominion?”

Gevri hesitated. “Yes, though I doubt he understands the extent of it. Jix and I . . . well, let’s just say we look out for each other.”

There was a sadness in Gevri’s voice just then that made Taemon think there was more to that story. Taemon eyed the cat warily. “So she’s the only animal in the Republik with dominion?”

Gevri nodded. “For a while he was experimenting with breeding animals to increase their capacity for dominion. It worked, to some extent, but he could never control the animals, so he had them killed. I tried to save them, but Jix was the only one that I could —” Gevri’s voice broke, and he cleared his throat. “Jix is the only one.”

As sad as that was, Taemon was glad he wouldn’t be encountering more animals with psi. “But you’re not the only archon. You said there were others.”

“I was the first. My father succeeding in bringing out dominion in me, but he failed in other respects. Despite his best efforts, my personality traits weren’t right. I was not aggressive enough.”

“Not aggressive?” Taemon interrupted. “I saw you handle those soldiers. That seemed plenty aggressive.”

“No, that was defensive,” Gevri said shortly. “There is a big difference between the two.”

“So what happened when your father determined that you weren’t cut out to be an archon?” Amma asked.

“He couldn’t very well just let me go,” Gevri explained. “I’d spent my whole life in the military outpost, save for a few missions in the Republik. What if someone started asking too many questions? Or what if I accidentally used dominion?” It was clear by the way Gevri said these words that they were not his but his father’s. The father’s contempt for his son was all too clear. “So my father gave me a choice: toughen up and become an archon solider or spend the rest of my life locked behind bars. I chose a third option.”

Taemon and Amma followed along behind Gevri without speaking, each too lost in thought. What kind of father would threaten to imprison his son for life? What kind of son would betray his own father?

They were quiet for some time. Then Gevri suddenly continued talking.

“A few months ago, Father got his hands on some old books about psi. I snuck into his office and read them.”

Taemon heard Amma gasp. He looked at Gevri to see if he’d noticed her response, but if he had, he didn’t let on. He kept talking.

“That’s when I understood that psi wasn’t supposed to be a weapon. It was supposed to be peaceful, to enable people to do good things for one another. My whole life, my whole family, everything has been centered on war. The idea of a society built around peace was fascinating to me. I’ve dreamed about going to Deliverance ever since.”

“Those books, what happened to them?” Amma asked.

“Father hid them somewhere. He must have suspected that I’d found them, or feared that I might, anyway. He wouldn’t want word about those books getting out. What if there are other weaklings among the archons?”

Though Gevri’s voice dripped with sarcasm, Taemon could still detect the hurt in the way he said “weaklings.” It reminded Taemon of what he’d been called when he’d lost his psi: a freakling. Some wounds never fully healed.