They were still missing something. With luck, perhaps Mr. Maltus would finally reveal what it was.
“I assume you didn’t learn anything useful,” Shaedra commented as the two men hung up their coats and sat down. She stood propped against the far wall, arms folded across her chest. Zach wondered dimly if she had been standing in that same pose ever since they banished her from the other room.
“I’m not certain yet,” Danev admitted, dropping a large metal box down on the floor. Aram had lugged in two similar containers of his own. “It will take a while to sift through all of this information.”
“I hope you don’t plan on doing that here,” Zach said. “We need to get out of this drekhole.”
“We’ll take the afternoon train to Vaschberg tomorrow,” Danev told him. His eyes flicked to Shaedra. “For now, I was hoping you could finally arrange that conversation with Glenn.”
“He should be back at this point, assuming his trip went as planned,” she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small metal bracelet with a crystal set into the middle of it. “It only carries voice, unfortunately—the Enclave doesn’t hand out full projection stones without a fight.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Eve said softly. “I just want to talk to him.”
Shaedra nodded and touched the crystal. It hummed for a moment before slowly floating out of the metal band. It sat there glowing for almost a minute before flashing once.
“I was just about to contact you,” Maltus’s voice came back. “I take it everything went as planned? You have the journal?”
“I do,” Shaedra confirmed, “and quite a bit more than that. I brought you an audience.”
The crystal remained silent for several seconds. “Evelyn?”
Eve licked at her lips and leaned forward. “Mr. Maltus.”
His relieved sigh was audible despite the subtle distortion in the sound. “Thank the Goddess you’re all right. Is Zachary with you?”
“I am,” Zach said. “And so is an old friend of yours.”
“It’s been a long time, Glenn,” Danev said.
“So it has,” Maltus murmured. “I’m glad the children were able to find you, Gregori. I’m sorry to have dropped all of this in your lap, but—”
“You lied,” Eve interrupted. Her hands were balled into fists on her lap. “You lied to us.”
Zach thought he could hear their old neighbor sucking in a deep breath, but it might have been his imagination. Still, he could almost visualize the other man bracing himself for what was to come.
“Yes,” Maltus admitted. “And for that, I am sorry. I just hope you’ll give me the chance to explain.”
“First you need to know what’s happened,” Shaedra cut in. “Chaval left the book unattended inside his fortress. He wasn’t even there.”
“That’s…curious.”
“We suspect he knew we would come after it,” Danev said. “And as best we can figure, he wanted us to have it. We aren’t sure why just yet.”
“A few pages are missing, but otherwise it’s intact,” Shaedra added. “He made sure to leave all the visions about Eve—the ones you suspected would be in there.”
“I see,” Maltus replied softly. “So I take it you’ve read over them.”
Shaedra glanced over to Eve. “I haven’t, but she has.”
“You never told me,” Eve murmured. “You never said anything about it, and neither did mom. Why?”
“It’s…complicated,” he managed. “I’m afraid it’s something we need to discuss in person. Otherwise—”
“Tell me!” Eve screamed as she abruptly lurched to her feet. She glared daggers at the crystal for a long moment, her entire body shuddering with rage, before finally slumping back into the chair. Her voice returned to a whisper. “Please tell me.”
“She wanted to protect you,” Maltus said softly. “She made a choice. It might not have been the right one; I don’t know. But you need to understand that she didn’t believe it.”
Zach frowned. “What do you mean?”
“She didn’t think the vision was set in stone,” he explained. “She had a unique perspective on the future, I guess you could say. She believed the Goddess spoke to her for a reason; she thought she was supposed to change what she saw. The problem was that she didn’t trust herself.”
Danev nodded as he pulled at his moustache. “You mean after Simon—after Steamworks.”
“I assume you already told them about it.”
“They know,” he confirmed, glancing between Eve and Zach.
“Your mother believed she’d misused the gift she’d been given,” Maltus explained. “She thought she’d been shown this vision of the future—this world of Industry and machines—in order to bring it about.”
“Because it fit in with what your group was trying to achieve,” Zach reasoned. “You thought the country was going to need that change to survive.”
Maltus sighed. “Yes. It was much later when she realized she might have misinterpreted it all. She thought perhaps she was supposed to prevent this ‘Dusty revolution’ from happening. Instead she unleashed it upon the world.”
“That’s what drove her into isolation, then,” Danev said. “That’s why she left—why she ran so far from Simon and Valmeri.”
“It’s also why she turned away from her gift for many years,” Maltus continued. “She stopped having visions entirely for nearly a decade, but then shortly after you were conceived, Evelyn, they returned. It was…not an easy thing to handle.”
“She still could have told me,” Eve insisted. “We could have figured it out together.”
“There were times when she wanted to, believe me. But she was convinced that nothing good would come of it—at least not when you were young. Instead she did everything she could to make sure it would never come to pass.”
“Not everything,” Shaedra pointed out. “She could have killed her.”
Everyone in the room turned to scowl at her at once, but the Vakari didn’t seem to notice.
“She was not going to harm her own daughter,” Maltus said coldly. “That was never an option.”
“So now others suffer instead,” Shaedra replied. “What a courageous choice.”
Zach shot her a glare that could have melted steel. “That explains her mother’s choice, but what about you? Why didn’t you say anything? And why did you send this
thing
to follow us.”
“The Enclave has always been interested in Tara,” Maltus said. “They sent me to keep an eye on her for many years, but they never chose to take action until recently.”
“Which I assume coincides with Chaval’s sudden rise in popularity,” Danev reasoned. “They realized that this civil war Tara had warned them about was much closer than they wanted to admit—and that meant her daughter had suddenly become a threat.”
“Those in the Magister’s Council who believed in Tara’s power fear that her prophecy is nearing fruition. They wish to take action.”
“In other words, they want to kill me,” Eve rasped. A tear streaked down her left cheek. “So you sent an assassin to do it for you.”
“I sent Shaedra to buy us time,” Maltus insisted. “The Enclave believes she is in position to finish the job if they order it. But that isn’t going to happen. We’re going to get you out of there—we’re going to figure out a way to fix this.”
Danev sighed. “Well, whatever your reasons, Glenn, right now I’m more worried about how the Enclave will respond to Simon. Tara’s vision hinges on the start of a civil war between the Dusties and the magi, and it seems like that time is fast approaching.”
“The Enclave will react,” Maltus told them, “but I don’t know how just yet. I’ve been subtly excluded from their recent deliberations.”
Shaedra’s eyes narrowed. “So they realize you aren’t going to listen to them. That means they won’t rely on you to get the job done—they’ll have someone else nearby, maybe even another Vakari.”
“It’s possible,” he conceded. “In any event, I’m going to try and stall them a bit more before leaving. I can meet you all there in a few days.”
“We’re heading back to Vaschberg tomorrow,” Danev said. “Meet us there if you can.”
“I will, and then we can…talk,” Maltus managed, his voice slipping just slightly. “I tried to speak with Karyn earlier, to convince her to help us, but she’s too intertwined in politics. She and Janel are set to meet with Chaval in Cadotheia later this week.”
Danev frowned. “What for?”
“I’m not sure. I told her not to go, but she thinks she might be able to negotiate with him, to prevent a conflagration with the Dusties. That’s all she would tell me.”
“We spoke to Jack, and he wasn’t much help, either. He’s working for Chaval directly.”
Maltus sighed. “I had wondered about that.”
“So what of Jean?”
“I convinced her to come with me and help,” Maltus said. “It isn’t much, but at least three of us are better than nothing.”
Danev idly tapped his cane. “It will certainly be an interesting reunion, that’s for sure.” He paused briefly. “I’m not exactly sure what you’re expecting, Glenn. If you defy the Enclave, they won’t just let you go.”
“It doesn’t matter. This is bigger than they are. If we can do anything to stop a war, we have to try. And we need to keep Eve safe. That’s our top priority.”
Zach swiveled his withering glare on the crystal. “It’s good you started caring about that now.”
“I have always cared, Zachary,” Maltus replied with surprising force. “I care about both of you, and I will do everything in my power to keep you safe. I’ll explain the rest when I get there, but for now you just have to trust me.”
Zach shook his head and glanced to Eve. She didn’t say anything; she just remained tucked in a ball in the chair.
“I look forward to seeing both of you, then,” Danev said. “I just hope you’re not too late.”
“So do I,” Maltus murmured, and the crystal fell silent. Its inner glow faded, and it sunk back inside the metal band.
“The Enclave will know he’s turned on them,” Aram commented after a moment. “And they will make preparations.”
Danev nodded. “Glenn knows that better than anyone, I’m sure. He’ll figure something out.”
Aram didn’t reply, but from his expression Zach didn’t think he believed it.
“In any event,” Danev went on, “I think we all have some reading to do. And we should get to sleep early—the only train running tomorrow is a freight rail. It won’t be particularly comfortable.”
“It’s heading out of here,” Zach muttered, glancing out the closest window. “That’s all I care about.”
***
“I used to wonder what you’d done with yourself all this time,” Jean Lashowe commented as she ran her fingers across the bookshelf on the eastern wall of Maltus’s study. It was stocked with philosophy books ranging from Aldaris to Zulgrich—the classics, so to speak, and volumes he admittedly hadn’t cracked open in probably twenty years. “You never could stay out of trouble.”
Maltus sighed as the sending stone went silent. He hadn’t intended for Jean to hear all that, at least not like this, but as usual Shaedra’s timing was less-than-convenient. But he was going to have to tell Jean everything sooner or later, and for her sake he might as well do it while she still had a chance to run away.
“I’ve made some mistakes,” he murmured. “I wanted—”
She raised a hand. “You don’t have to justify it. We never agreed on the Enclave before and I don’t think that’s going to change now. But it doesn’t matter. Like you said, this goes beyond old arguments. You want to keep Tara’s daughter safe, and so do I. Let’s stay focused on the present.”