Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) (10 page)

Olive’s relationship with Mira was an old one. It had been strained lately, but her death still stung hard, and Olive could only imagine what it was like for Holt. She could still see the
Wind Star
incinerating into the ground. If Olive wanted, she could do the math, try and figure out how many Landships might be left after that battle, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to know the answer. For all she knew, the
Wind Rift
was now the last of her kind.

Another figure joined them, adding more brooding to the occasion. Avril stepped past them and sat down at the front, where the bow dropped down toward the ground and curved underneath.

It was strange. No one on this ship, even Ravan, seemed all that thrilled about where they were headed.

Ahead of them, probably ten miles distant, something massive and huge towered over the desert, the heat from the air wavering in sparkling transparencies in front of it. It was a city. A big one. Its name was Faust.

From what Olive had heard, the land here contained massive deposits of crude oil and gas. In order to tap and drill it, some forgotten company in the World Before created the world’s biggest land-based oil platform, a structure that stretched across the desert some fifty square miles, punctuated by giant towers made of reinforced steel that rose a thousand feet off the ground. They were still visible, the heart of the old facility.

From the top of each, plumes of fire shot into the sky, a hundred feet tall on their own. They were called “flare towers,” used to burn off the excess flammable gasses released by the pumping that was happening under the ground. At night, those fires could be seen for miles. Olive had seen them herself, from much farther away. If you were Menagerie, they were probably thrilling to see. If you weren’t … they were terrifying.

Below, the dune buggies growled louder as they shot forward, leaving the
Wind Rift
behind. Above, the three gyrocopters flashed over, disappearing toward the city ahead.

“Where’s this damn port?” Olive asked, watching the city come closer, and Ravan pointed to the flaming tower farthest right.

“Commerce Pinnacle. Two docks there, it’s where we put captured Landships.”

“Just two?” Olive was surprised. “You’ve captured six of the fleet just this year.”

Ravan smiled. “Well, they don’t really stay docked all that long.”

In a few moments, everyone on deck saw why. Coming toward them was a horrible sight, and Olive sensed the crew’s attention lock onto it.

Landships, dozens of them, what was left of their hulls rotting in the sun where they’d been discarded. Wood, it seemed, wasn’t of much use to the Menagerie, and that was pretty much all that was left. Broken and shattered, the once polished smooth timber frayed into splinters where the frames and the supports and everything else had been ripped unceremoniously loose.

In all her life, Olive had never seen something so awful. Those ships were more than just wood and metal, they were homes, works of art, some of the most beautiful creations on the planet, sculpted together out of memories; wood and sheet metal and pieces of the World Before that would have just gone on rusting and dying if not for the Wind Traders. Every Landship Olive had ever been on, no matter how big or ugly or slow, had always felt
alive
 … and the ones here had been
murdered.

It was a Landship graveyard.

“One … quarter Chinook,” Olive ordered in a suddenly frail voice that barely carried. It took a moment for the crew to react, but they eventually obeyed, shortening the sail length as Tommy, the artifact handler, dialed the Chinook down to its lowest setting. The roaring wind quieted, the sails lost a little of their power, letting the
Wind Rift
move forward slowly through the remnants and memories lying in the sun.

No one on board spoke as the ship passed through the wrecks. Olive could pick out pieces and parts of them that were familiar, placing those aspects to names, most of them ones she knew or had been on. Each recognition was painful.

“
Wind Sail,
” Olive intoned as they drifted past one. “
Wind Turn,
” as they rolled by another.

From around her, other voices joined her own, calling out the ships they recognized.

“Wind Sky. Wind Rail…”

It was some kind of strange, mournful acknowledgement, in voices that held the thinly covered truth that their own home would likely soon be among those wrecks, crumbling in the sun.

“Wind Pulse. Wind Streak. Wind Fire…”

On and on the names echoed, until Olive couldn’t take it anymore and she looked away and back to Ravan. The pirate studied her evenly. There was no challenge in her eyes, no mirth at the horror around them … but neither was there any remorse.

“Hold on to the anger,” Ravan said, studying her. “You’ll get your shot for payback, everyone does. Just make sure when the time comes, you can pull the trigger. It’s never as easy as you think.”

Olive studied the pirate. She had a strange habit of both proving she was exactly what Olive thought she was, and, at the same time, something completely different. They certainly had their differences, but they had a lot in common too. Both held positions dominated by boys, and they held their ground and their place fiercely, earning loyalty. Either way, Olive did not, and would never, truly like Ravan. The horrors she had just seen had solidified that. But she did respect her.

The eight towers stretched into the sky, flames at their tops, and the city was arrayed beneath them. Slowly, over the years that followed the invasion, the pieces of a city had been built around those towers, circling them in ever-expanding platforms of wood and sheet metal, their foundations built out of old cars and concrete and other materials. Each tower became a “Pinnacle,” and each Pinnacle provided a single, specific aspect of the city.

As they drifted closer, Olive could make out the Skydash, the complicated system of thick metal wires that ran between the various towers, and allowed the more brazen to zip along them with special hooks called Dashclaws. Olive had always heard about the Skydash. It sounded insane, just the thing you would find in a pirate’s den like Faust.

Olive kept issuing commands, guiding the
Wind Rift
toward its berth. The platforms that ringed each of the city’s Pinnacles had been built up off the ground a good twenty or thirty feet, and the one around what Ravan had called Commerce was no different. A flat, wedgelike protrusion shot out from where the platform ended, a crude construction to serve as a dock.

As they crept closer, Olive noticed something else. The way Avril tensed at the front of the ship told her she noticed it too.

On the Pinnacle’s platform, all around the dock, moved a wave of people. Thousands of them, all pressed and packed tight, waiting for the
Wind Rift
to arrive, which made it all the more unsettling. They were
expected.
In fact, it looked like a damned hero’s welcome. The only problem was, Olive and her crew weren’t the heroes in this story. They were the
trophies.

“Another three degrees starboard,” Olive said, judging the distance to the approaching dock.

“Aye, Captain,” Casper intoned, his voice uneasy. The ship kept inching closer.

Tommy stood by the Grounders, ready to shut off the artifacts. Olive waited until the ship inched barely two feet from the side of the dock. It would be a perfect berth, she thought ironically, but she didn’t feel much satisfaction. It was probably the last time her ship would dock anywhere ever again.

“Chinook, all stop,” Olive said, feeling her throat tighten.

“All stop, aye,” Tommy intoned as he shut it down. The wind above them silenced as the artifact’s effect died. The
Wind Rift
settled into place, its momentum gone. They were still and motionless.

The sounds of the crowd overtook everything … and it was deafening.

It stretched all around, a mass of people that pulsed in every direction on the docks and into the Pinnacle platform, so thick it blocked the view into the city. The occasional sound of gunfire ripped the air as the pirates fired into the sky in celebration, chanting two words over and over.

“Power. Profit. Power. Profit. Power…”

Olive swallowed, tried to stay calm, but the chant and the roar and the gunfire pressed in on her. They were in the hot, open air, but everything felt claustrophobic.

She looked at her crew and they looked back. She studied each of them with pride and amazement. Not one of the fourteen had jumped ship before making port at Faust. It was entirely possible they would all be killed here, who knew, maybe within the next five minutes … yet they had stayed at their posts.

“I hope you know … how proud of you I am,” Olive made herself say. They deserved more than that, but she couldn’t find any better words. “Tie her off.”

The crew set to work, closing her latches, stowing the sails, all routine activities none of them knew whether they would ever perform again. The crowd continued to roar around them.

*   *   *

AVRIL STOOD AT THE
edge of the
Wind Rift,
staring down at the wooden beams of the dock, faded and gray from years under the burning sun. Another step … and she would be home.

Home
 …

She felt a twinge of pain at how easily the thought had formed. It felt like a betrayal. This was
not
home. This was a
promise,
a debt being repaid. Nothing more. She would suffer the tortures of this place, for honor’s sake, for Gideon, but it would
never
be home.

“Might as well get it over with, dear heart,” Ravan’s voice whispered behind her, and it stirred a cold anger in her. “It is what it is.”

Avril said nothing. She stared at the dock another moment, then stepped off and felt the ball of her foot touch down, and that was that.

Only it wasn’t.

The roar of the crowd, already loud and jarring, intensified. It took a moment for Avril to figure out why. Every stare, amid the thousands of pirates, was aimed at
her
. And it was shocking.

They knew her? They
remembered
her? She stared at the faces in confusion …

The crowd roared again as Ravan and her men stepped off. In Faust, the capture of a Landship was the most respected show of power you could achieve. On top of that, Ravan and her crew were returning from what had generally been considered a suicide mission. They were heroes. For a while, at least. Faust wasn’t a place where you rested on your laurels, it only remembered what you did today.

Ravan stood next to her, staring at all the faces, soaking up the sound of the voices and the shaking of the wood under their feet. Behind them, the last of the people who were coming off disembarked.

Holt landed on the dock, his stare blank, his face unreadable. Avril wasn’t sure why he had run from this place, but he knew there was a death mark on his head because of it. Coming back took a lot of guts, and yet it didn’t seem to even register with him.

Avril remembered watching those ships explode, including the one with the Freebooter on it. A part of him had died with her, she figured. That’s what losing everything did to you. As he moved forward, his eyes met hers for one second, then he looked away again, but in that moment there was a glimmer of acknowledgment. Avril realized then that she and Holt had a lot in common now.

The eight Pinnacles of Faust were clearly in view, at varying distances, the lines of the Skydash zigzagging through the air between them, and she watched as figures flew down them at dizzying speeds, one after the other, platform to platform. She noticed something else too, something different from what she remembered.

Two of the Pinnacles stood out. Unlike all the others, they flew flags, and the flags were not what she expected. Where the normal Menagerie banners were red with a white, eight-pointed star, these were the opposite

White. With a
red
star.

Along one of those Pinnacles, among the platforms and structures of wood and metal built there, stood hundreds of other figures. But they weren’t yelling and cheering, they just stared down at her. At the top of one, out in front, stood a tall boy. Even from this distance, Avril could see long blond hair whisking out in the wind. His eyes, she could tell, were locked on hers.

The Strange Lands had honed Avril’s instincts to sense danger, no matter how far, and right now, she felt menace from that boy. Whoever he was, whoever the group that flew that flag, they meant her harm.

Avril just looked away. Before, she would have sought the kid out, found and killed him in his sleep, and whoever else might be with him. It would have been a simple task, he was only Menagerie, but, now … what did it really matter? Her life was over either way.

From somewhere came three harsh bursts of sound. Electronic and staticky, they echoed through the Pinnacles of Faust. Whatever it was, the pirates seemed to recognize it. Their yells ceased, the stomping of feet went still, celebratory gunfire silenced. The crowd parted, making way for several figures. Avril’s heart began to beat heavily. She knew who was coming.

Six Menagerie guards, burly ones with scars and malice in their posture, surrounded a man. Like Avril’s eyes, his were clear of the Tone, but that was to be expected, given his age. He was close to fifty, a rarity now, and it meant he was Heedless.

The guards around him flanked out protectively while he stepped forward. He looked older than Avril remembered, the lines around his eyes were more pronounced, the gray in his short, cropped hair more visible. Like his followers, he wore only black military gear, but he donned his more professionally, his shirt tucked into his cargo pants, the legs falling around the tops of his boots. He wore the necessities of the new world in the style of the old.

His black skin had the rough, leathery look of someone who had spent most his life in the sun. A trait of a worker, but Tiberius Marseilles had never been a laborer, even in the World Before, so it had always seemed a contradiction. He wasn’t particularly tall or athletic, there was nothing imposing or even threatening in the way he carried himself. It was only in his eyes where you saw the cunning and intellect that allowed him to create from nothing one of the world’s most powerful cities, a city of thieves and liars and brigands, and yet keep them all satisfied and convinced of his dominance.