Eve of Destruction (49 page)

“What if I…” Eve clenched her hands and bit down on her lip. “What if I can’t control it?”

“Then we die,” Shaedra said flatly. “All of us. Fortunately for you, you’re a smart girl and you have people who want to help you. You’ll figure it out.”

“I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or not,” Eve muttered.

“It should. Right now, though, you should relax. Find a bath if you can, or just wait for the boys to fetch us dinner. I’m going to scout around a little bit and see if I can find someplace nearby that we can practice—assuming you don’t mind being left alone.”

She did, actually, but then she decided it was foolish beyond reason. Here she was, the Avenshal, someone with so much power inside of her that she was supposed to destroy the Fane…and she was scared of being left alone? She might have been in the slums of the Dusty capital, but that shouldn’t have mattered—it didn’t seem like the Dark Messiah should have been afraid if she were left alone in the middle of the Void, for Edeh’s sake.

And maybe controlling that fear was the first step in accepting what she was.

“I’ll be fine,” Eve said.

Shaedra eyed her for a long moment, and Eve couldn’t help but feel she was being sized up. Finally the Vakari nodded and headed out the door.

***

“How are you holding up?”

Zach tilted to face Danev as the older man took a swig from a bottle of whiskey and then a long drag from a fresh cigar. He looked haggard, certainly, as all of them did, but a simple drink had apparently gone a long way towards repairing the damage. He was once again calm and in control, the calculating businessman they’d come to rely on over this past week.

Zach wasn’t sure he had weathered this most recent storm nearly as well himself. He was tired, sore, confused…and more than a little angry. Mostly at himself.

“It seems like I should be asking you that,” Zach replied, biting down on a piece of dried meat. The two of them sat together on stools at the pub waiting for their rather sizeable order of food to be filled. Normally he would have winced at the prospect of eating anything from a place like this, but now he was so hungry they could have cooked up balma steak and he wouldn’t have thought twice about eating it.

“I’d like to claim that I used to be in better shape,” Danev murmured, “but that would be stretching the truth. I’ve never been much of an outdoorsman.”

“I meant because it was your bodyguard that tried to kill us.”

“Ah, yes, well, that just validates a decision I made a long time ago.”

Zach leaned on his elbow and lowered his voice a bit. The pub was almost empty, but he didn’t feel like taking unnecessary chances.

“I assume you mean staying away from the Enclave,” he said.

Danev nodded gravely. “I severed my last official tie to them almost ten years ago. I still have some semi-reliable contacts on the inside, but nothing like before.”

“I’ve been wondering about that, actually. You described your college friends as a bunch of rebels who hated the Enclave and everything it stood for. So then how did you end up entangled with them at all?”

“That,” he whispered, “is a long story.”

“They don’t seem to be in a rush to cook our dinner,” Zach pointed out.

Danev made an odd face and took another swig of whiskey. “People like to think they get wiser as they get older, and in some small ways they might. More often than not, though, they forget just as much as they learn—and then end up cynical or even downright bitter.”

Zach grunted. “That describes my parents pretty well.”

“It describes most people, I imagine,” Danev said. “When I finally left Valmeri it was like stepping outside of a tent in the middle of a hurricane. I’d gone from a safe, nurturing environment to something more like an endless gunfight. I’m sure you had a similar experience in the service.”

“Sometimes literally,” he murmured.

“Well, the point is that once I left, the crystal clear waters I had been staring at for the past four years suddenly become incredibly murky. We had been fighting to protect an imaginary group of people, and that never hit me until I left school behind.”

Zach frowned. “What do you mean?’”

“We had this notion that there was a group of people out there just waiting for us to save them,” Danev explained. “And that once we solved their problems—once we brought them food, medicine, and all the other things we thought the world was depriving them of—they would embrace us as their saviors.”

“That almost sounds like the Polerian War,” Zach commented. “Wasn’t that the whole reason we got involved in the first place?”

“Partially, and yes, the similarities are striking. Which is all the more damning, really—we were the first generation after the war, and you would think we might have learned something. Instead we were just as arrogant in our way, just as certain that we were right and that no one could tell us differently.”

He puffed at his cigar. “Anyway, my point was that after Valmeri, I had to make a lot of tough choices just like everyone else. Simon and Tara’s plan had fallen through, our group had collapsed, and suddenly I was alone in the world.”

“So you turned to the Enclave,” Zach reasoned.

“Not exactly. Glenn did, as you know, but I always had a reasonably keen business sense, and I wanted to get started on my own. I raised enough money to start a few small shops, but I knew that ultimately I wasn’t going to get anywhere being the black sheep. For all our supposed power and influence, a mage who takes the Oath Rituals has surprisingly limited choices in front of him. He either goes on to teach others, joins the Enclave directly, or serves at a temple—and the last option isn’t easy if you happen to be male.”

“And you didn’t do any of those,” Zach said.

“No, and I knew the Enclave would keep their eyes on me. I decided to make it easy for them and offered my services in a limited capacity. We had a functional relationship over the years, for the most part. I passed them along information, and they left me alone to run my business.”

Danev sighed and tapped the ashes off his cigar. “I never really thought of it as blood money, but in some ways, that’s exactly what it was. When I severed ties five years ago, I doubted they had enough influence left in the west to really pressure me, if they even wanted to. They’d had two decades to make certain that I wasn’t sharing their secrets or Defiling—I figured they might just leave me alone.”

“I thought about that a lot while we were walking,” Zach said. “About Aram, I mean. Do you really think the Enclave placed him with you based on Mrs. DeShane’s visions?”

“Far-fetched,” Danev dismissed. “Too many in the Magister’s Council doubted Tara’s powers, and Eclipseans don’t exactly sprout fully-formed out of corn fields. Despite the Enclave’s influence and power, they’re not in the habit of wasting resources.”

“So you think it was luck, then?”

“I think I underestimated how valuable I was as an information gatherer,” he murmured. “And they weren’t willing to sever that tie, even if I was.”

Zach nodded idly and glanced to the other patrons. None of them seemed to care at all about what was going on around them. Sadly, the cook behind the bar seemed to have inherited their apathy. At this rate, Zach might have to order more jerky just to make his stomach shut up.

“I’d like to say I should have known better,” Danev whispered after finishing off his bottle, “but I
did
know better. I checked him out for months. I had people I trust vouch for him. I looked the gift horse squarely in the mouth and it didn’t bite.”

“Speaking of biting, I don’t want to leave Eve alone with Shaedra too long,” Zach said.

“If she wanted to do something, she’s had—”

“I know, she’s had plenty of opportunities,” he muttered. “And she hasn’t given us any reason to doubt her. But after Aram and everything else that’s happened…”

Danev clamped a hand on his shoulder. “Eve can take care of herself, you know.”

Zach sighed. “Apparently she has the power to do a lot of things.”

“I’m not talking about magic,” Danev said, smiling wryly. “She’s a DeShane. They always figure out ways to get into trouble and then claw their way out of it.”

Zach grunted. “I hope you’re right.”

“Every man has to believe in something,” Danev said wistfully. “Wouldn’t you rather it be her?”

Zach nodded and gnawed at another piece of dried meat. He had never doubted his friend in his entire life, and he hadn’t once regretted it. Was there a reason to start now? Maybe he could help her through it, or maybe he didn’t even have to. Maybe he just needed to be there like he always was, the loyal fool willing to do anything to get a smile.

Because it was worth it each and every time.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“It’s a Goddess-damned circus!”

It wasn’t a terrible description of the day’s events, Amaya Soroshi mused, but that didn’t stop her from tossing the nearby soldier a warning glare. He clamped his mouth shut and turned his attention back to the proceedings. Amaya stared at him for a few more seconds before shifting her eyes down to the bottom level.

Reporters swarmed the ground floor of the Hall of Innovation, including many from the other side of the country. President Janel’s arrival anywhere was big news, naturally, but a meeting like this only a week before the election was particularly significant. Janel had been avoiding Chaval in person and even by proxy for months now; he had left his slanderous campaign messages to the eastern media and the occasional pamphlet or poster out here. He hadn’t visited Cadotheia personally since before Chaval had even declared candidacy.

But today that had all changed, and the streets thundered with jeering crowds. The locals saw Janel’s visit as a sign of weakness, perhaps a last desperate plea for a coalition government since the polls were so skewed against him. Chaval had tried to play that down, at least publically. He wanted to be seen as taking the high ground in all of this, and he was ultimately the one who had invited Janel—and the distant third-place magi candidate, Karyn Marose—to Cadotheia in the first place.

Amaya was still shocked that either candidate had decided to come at all. They couldn’t possibly expect their message to resonate with the Dusties out here, and she doubted they were so foolish as to believe Chaval would actually give in to any of their requests. He had the people here clenched neatly in his palm, and with the military looming right over his shoulder, he had no incentive at all to listen to anything his opponents had to say.

Yet they were still here, and Chaval had ordered they be treated civilly. Clearly Amaya still had a lot to learn about Arkadian politics.

Eventually she took a deep breath and made her way past the dozens of armed men lining the stairs all the way down to the conference room on the first floor. Janel had brought an impressive force with him, though most remained stationed outside along with Chaval’s Steamworks soldiers. Marose had essentially come alone aside from a pair of aides. Amaya couldn’t decide if that was because the Enclave had abandoned her as a serious candidate or if it was some type of veiled message about her personal power as a mage. Either way, it was unlikely to impress anyone here.

Amaya slipped past the mingling crowds and over towards her seat next to Chaval. For once he hadn’t stuffed her in a glittering, form-fitting gown, though this more casual, floor-length dress was just as restrictive in some ways. She forced a polite smile towards the others before taking a moment to size everyone up one last time before they got started.

President Janel sat directly across from them, and while Amaya had never actually seen him in person before, just going by sketches alone it seemed as though he had noticeably aged in the last few years. His graying beard was even more unkempt than the portraits, and he looked uncomfortable inside his suit, not unlike a farmer who had dressed up for the weekend worship ceremony. Janel managed to keep most of the tension off his face, but she could see the fear lurking behind his eyes. The presence of his assistants and two blue-coated bodyguards didn’t seem to help.