True Son (18 page)

“Pair up and look for food,” Gevri said. “Then meet me at the big house on the end of the street.”

There was so little food in these houses. His unit had to go inside at least ten houses before they’d found enough food to put together a meal. Everything seemed broken or patched together or repurposed. This street had the look of a place that had once known wealth and prestige but had fallen into neglect and poverty. They couldn’t even get the water to come out of the faucets. The lights were just about the only thing that worked.

Stop it
, Gevri told himself.
Don’t feel sorry for them. They brought this on themselves
. Why was he having all these second thoughts? Everything had felt so right on the march over here. He tried to summon those feelings of certainty, but it was becoming impossible. What were his options now? He couldn’t let his father down, not again. He couldn’t desert or quit or change his mind. He’d chosen this path; now he had to walk it.

They scraped together a meal, then he let the archons play cards until Pik started losing his temper. At that point, they all bedded down for the night. But Gevri lay awake for hours, reliving the horror he’d seen. Jix nuzzled his hand, but even that didn’t help him sleep.

The next day, the Republikite army was on the move again. Despite the celebrations that stretched into the late hours, they’d gotten an early start. Gevri, along with his archons and Jix, were near the front, as usual, and Gevri was in the lead. From all the reports, the Nathanites had a two-day lead on them, but everyone knew a trained army could move much faster than a bunch of slow civilians. They’d catch up to them soon enough. There was no place for them to run. The tunnel was guarded heavily, and Gevri was pretty sure Taemon wasn’t going to send all those folks over the mountain on kites.

They were moving west now on a fairly nice road. West to the river, then south toward the ocean. That’s what the scouts had told them. After two solid hours of marching, someone up ahead called for a halt. Gevri led his group under a tree.

“Eat some travel rations,” Gevri told his unit. They hadn’t found enough food for a decent breakfast. “And drink water.” He poured some water for Jix to drink.

“I still don’t get it,” Saunch said. “Why do we have to follow them? Why can’t we just let them go?”

Gevri chewed his stale, dense travel bar and had to take two swallows of water before he could talk — it was that dry. “We can’t risk it,” Gevri said, even though he’d had similar thoughts. He was a leader, and he needed to act like it. “We can’t have them just traipsing around out there.”

“Why not?” Saunch asked.

Gevri looked Saunch in the eye. “We’ve talked about this before. We can’t run the risk of them becoming allies to the Nau.”

The archons were silent. Probably because their travel bars were just as dry and dense as his.

Gevri continued, “Look, you were in on the planning meetings. Remember the plan? When we catch up to them, the general is going to give them one more chance to join us. And if they don’t, well, then they have made their choice.”

Jix lifted her head with a sudden alertness.

“Hold on,” Berliott said. “I’m picking up on something else. There’s something . . . in the mountain.” Her voice had a soft, dreamy tone.

Gevri shook her shoulder. “Berliott? Don’t overextend. Break the connection. Now!”

She shuddered, then looked at Gevri. The clarity and sharpness in her eyes made Gevri sigh with relief. She had broken the connection in time.

“What did you see?”

“Republik war machines. Blasting and drilling their way through the mountains,” Berliott said. “Followed by a line of tanks.”

“Are you sure?” Gevri asked.

“Yes, sir.”

The general had never shared that part of the plan. But Gevri wouldn’t put it past him. His father loved dramatic entrances, and shocking the Nathanites into submission with tanks and war machines certainly fit his style.

“Cindahad and Pik, I want you to take turns with Berliott. Rotate every fifteen minutes. Use your remote viewing and keep me informed of the war machines’ progress. Along with anything else you see. But be careful! Do not overextend. I can’t afford to lose any of you. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!” they replied in unison.

Gevri took another drink of water but had trouble swallowing. His throat felt tight.
Gods, let Taemon have the sense to surrender. If not, this is going to be a bloodbath
.

When he reached out to stroke Jix, her neck muscles felt rigid. She was as tense as Gevri.

Breakfast was a handful of dried fruit and some crackers. Challis brought Taemon and Yens steaming cups of her herbal tea. Yens had been quiet so far this morning, which was more unsettling than his usual arrogant comments.

Challis handed each of the boys a warm mug, then sat on a folding stool next to Taemon. “I noticed you haven’t used any psi at all on this trip. Not that I could tell, anyway.”

Taemon took a sip, then shook his head. “I’ll only use it when I absolutely have to.”

Yens looked up from his mug with wild eyes. “You have to use it when the army catches us, Tae. You have to. You can
not
let them do what they did yesterday. They slaughtered every one of those people. They —” His voice faltered, and he lowered his head to his mug again.

Mam walked over and rubbed his back. “Taemon will do the right thing.”

Taemon shoved a few dried blueberries into his mouth and tried not to think about it.

Challis cleared her throat. “I just want to say one more thing. The Heart of the Earth left you with psi for a reason. Whatever you have to do, if you need psi to do it, then don’t be afraid to use it.”

Before they even broke up camp, Mr. Parvel rode in with news. “Abson and Rhody rode out early this morning. The Republikites are already moving this way.”

“On foot?” Taemon asked.

“On foot,” Mr. Parvel confirmed. “But marching quickly. Much more quickly than we can move. They’ll overtake us later today.”

“Tell everyone to get moving,” Taemon said. “We have to make it to the cliffs today.”

As the cliffs loomed nearer and nearer, Taemon felt his nerves beginning to unravel. He had been so focused on getting to the cliffs that he hadn’t spent much time thinking about what came next. How were these defenseless people meant to ward off the Republikite army? Would the Heart of the Earth tell him what to do once they reached the cliffs, or would he be left to figure it out on his own?

The gray-white cliffs seemed to grow taller, and Taemon began to feel smaller. How could he dare hope to live through this, let alone be victorious?

Finally, as the afternoon wore on, the group reached the cliffs, and the Parvels began directing the elderly, the infirm, and the children toward the back, close to the water, while the carts, wagons, and anyone willing to fight moved into position to meet the army that would surely come.

Where was Amma? When Taemon asked after her, he learned that her father had given her his horse to care for. Taemon suspected it was Mr. Parvel’s way of making sure she stayed near the rear.

As the people of Deliverance drew together in a tight bunch, Taemon fought to focus his thoughts. He needed to clear his head, to be open to messages from the Heart of the Earth. He needed to step away from the crowd for a moment.

Yens followed him.

“Yens, I need to be alone right now,” Taemon said.

“No, I’m staying with you.”

Taemon frowned. Was this Yens’s idea of loyalty? That was hard to swallow. More likely, Yens was trying to save his own skin. “Look, don’t think I can protect you. They’ll try to kill me first, you know.”

“Well, then, I’ll be your bodyguard. Who’s better suited for that job than a big brother?”

Taemon laughed. He wanted to remind Yens of at least three instances when Yens had tried to kill him. But that was in the past. Eons ago. “I mean it,” he said. “I need a few minutes to think.”

“Listen to me, Taemon. I was at the temple. I saw what they did. You
cannot
let that happen again.”

“We’ve already had this conversation. I know what you’re going to say, Yens, and —”

“You’re going to have to kill the general,” Yens said. “Skies, just kill the whole army. You could do it. You could do it right now if you wanted to. Just reach out and —” Yens made a strangling motion with his hands.

“Stop it, Yens.”

“Couldn’t you?” Yens yelled.

“I could. But how is that different from what the soldiers did at the temple yesterday?”

Yens scowled. “It’s not the same. Not at all.”

“It feels the same to me,” Taemon said. “Do you know the first time I wanted to kill someone with psi? It was you, Yens. I almost killed you, my own brother. That day, that very hour, I promised myself I would never kill you or anyone else with psi. I just can’t do it.”

Yens’s shoulders sagged. “But you’ll stand by and watch other people get killed.”

“I can’t control what other people do. I can only control what I do.”

Yens locked eyes with him, and in that moment, Taemon wanted more than anything to simply understand Yens. He focused on Yens’s face, tried to read his expression, tried to look deeper. He slid so easily into clairvoyance; he didn’t even remember summoning psi. This time, he wasn’t looking inside an engine or a lock. He was looking inside his brother, looking into the very core of what made him tick. Not his bones and muscles this time, but his emotions. And those emotions were a tangled web of many opposing desires.

Yens was torn in two directions right now. On one hand, he envied Taemon’s power to save the lives of all the people of Deliverance. The fact that Taemon had that power instead of he — it was almost more than he could bear. But he also craved the love and acceptance of his family. And he felt guilt. So much guilt wrapped around everything.

Taemon reached out and put his arm around Yens.

It seemed to startle him at first, but then he leaned into Taemon. His shoulders shook. “All those people stayed because of me. They died because of me.”

“You didn’t kill them,” Taemon said. “The soldiers did.”

Even as Taemon heard the consoling words leave his mouth, he understood the feeling of being crushed by guilt. If he had done what Yens had, he would feel just as guilty as his brother. How many times had Taemon felt the weight of what he’d done to the people of Deliverance? He’d taken away psi, stripped them of the ability to defend themselves. All he was trying to do was follow the Heart of the Earth. He could not let himself crumble under these feelings of guilt and despair. He had to keep trying to the very end.

The tenderness ended the moment Taemon heard the rolling thunder of hundreds of marching feet.

The army of the Republik had arrived.

Gevri watched his father shouting orders over his radio.

“I want them surrounded!” he said. “Hem them in from the shoreline all the way to the cliffs! No way out!”

The general was in his glory. This was his moment. Gevri wondered what his own role in this battle was going to be. Much of that depended on how Taemon reacted to being trapped in a corner. So far, the only thing his father had asked him to do with dominion was to set up the command tent. He stood in the tent now, waiting for the general to give him his next orders after he was done talking to one of his commanders on the radio. Jix waited outside. The general did not allow her inside his tent.

“Priority number one is to get the perimeter set up. After that, start setting up camps. We’ll be here at least one night. Maybe more.” He paused, and Gevri heard the faint squawks of the person on the other end of the call. “It doesn’t matter how long we have to wait. The Nathanites aren’t going anywhere.” Another pause. “We’ve taken all that into account. I have a psi blocker hidden nearby.”

So Taemon wouldn’t be able to use psi. Gevri wasn’t sure how he felt about that. In some ways, it was a relief. In other ways, he wished for a fair fight.

“We can stall,” said the general. “It will make us look . . . merciful.” He chuckled, then ended the transmission.

“We’re stalling?” Gevri said “Why, sir?”

The general gathered up the papers on the table and shoved them in a file. “We’re waiting for one more guest at our little party.”