He nodded. Eventually, he knew, they would have that talk. The olds wounds that had driven them apart decades ago would tear open once more, and maybe she would storm away again, leaving him to wonder if he was a fool not to try and stop her.
Or maybe they’d bled enough for one lifetime. Maybe the wounds had healed, and scars were more durable than he thought.
“Too bad about Jack,” she said after a moment, dropping into the chair on the other side of the table and crossing her legs. “I completely lost touch with him—I wasn’t even sure he was still alive.”
“He’s lived in Cadotheia with Simon for years, but I’m not sure what he actually does there,” Maltus said.
“It was good to hear Gregori’s voice, at least.” She smiled tiredly. “The last time I saw him he was begging me for advice on how to approach Tara. He knew she and Simon were just about spent.”
Maltus grunted. “Well, at least it seems like Tara was right to trust him. I have no idea why she wanted Eve to go to him, but perhaps she foresaw something.”
“On the ride here you mentioned that Tara wrote just about everything down,” Jean said. “Did you ever read any of it?”
“Some, but not all,” he told her. “When I still lived there, she told me everything—at least, I think she did. But you have to remember, she went nearly an entire decade without a single vision at one point.”
“After she turned away from Simon.”
“Right. Then after she got pregnant it started again, and she told me the visions were a lot more…focused. She would have the same dreams over and over again, like recurring nightmares.”
Jean shook her head. “I can’t even imagine. To know what she knew about her gift, and to have it turn against her own daughter…”
“She never told Paul,” Maltus said. “Her husband, I mean. He never knew about it.”
Her brow furrowed. “But she told you?”
He nodded and swallowed heavily. “And she had to know whatever she told me would make it back to the Enclave. I never understood that. I still don’t.”
“Maybe she hoped they would help her somehow,” Jean suggested. “That they would get off their asses and do something useful for a change.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so,” Maltus said. “I started to wonder if she did it for another reason—something she didn’t tell me about. Her visions might have revealed something else she didn’t share.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her. She was usually a few steps ahead of the rest of us, even Simon.” Jean smiled and put her hands on the desk. “It used to drive me crazy. We ladies are quite competitive, if you didn’t know.”
He grinned back. “Right now it’s just frustrating. For all the things Tara knew, I still can’t believe a few of Simon’s thugs took her down.”
Jean’s smile vanished. “You think she let them?”
“I can’t see why,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense. A lot of things don’t make sense right now. I still can’t believe Eve is the Avenshal.”
Jean’s face hardened, and she reached out to touch his hand. “There’s another possibility, you know.”
Maltus took in a deep breath. Yes, there was. It was just one he hadn’t been willing to deal with—and still wasn’t.
“Tara could have been wrong,” he muttered. “About everything.”
“You said she turned away from the Goddess after she left Simon. Maybe she never truly came back.”
“She never turned away from Edeh,” Maltus said flatly. “She turned away from herself. There’s a difference.”
Jean held her olive eyes on his but didn’t reply. He knew exactly what she was thinking even if she didn’t say it—perhaps the Goddess had turned away from Tara. Perhaps she had so twisted her gift that Edeh never forgave her, and the visions she received were some type of special torment inflicted upon one who had done so much damage to the world and to the Fane.
Maltus pulled away his hand and sighed. No, those were his thoughts, not Jean’s. He was the bitter old man who had long since lost faith in almost everything. She was an Edehan priestess, and she believed in the Goddess’s boundless forgiveness.
“I should be able to get tickets to Vaschberg the day after tomorrow,” he told her eventually. “But first I need to meet with a few people just to make sure everything is in order.”
“I hope the Enclave lets you go, Glenn,” Jean said gravely. “Once you turn away from them…”
“I’m more worried about you being bored,” he replied, waving away her concern. “There isn’t a lot to do in the house.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “What makes you think I’m going to sit here all day? I haven’t been to Selerius in five years. I plan to shop.”
He chuckled despite himself. “Sounds like a good idea.”
“You do have a tub here, don’t you?” she asked as she stood. “I want to take a bath and then go to bed.”
“Upstairs,” he told her. “I’ll help you get your things into the guest room.”
“Oh, I know,” Jean said coyly. “You’re going to make me breakfast, too. Don’t think for a moment your penance is over.”
Maltus smiled despite himself. “This way.”
***
From the moment she’d first heard about this trip, Amaya had assumed it would be disastrous. At best, she figured maybe a dozen of the almost xenophobic Highlanders would actually come to listen to Chaval speak, and at worst it was possible a horde of them would show up to drive them off—possibly violently.
At no point had she expected this.
The wide, two-story logger’s cabin could have probably housed every single Highlander who called this village home, but it wasn’t even close to being large enough to accommodate the throng that had shown up. Their carriage had been accosted before they’d actually made it into the village, but not in the way Amaya had expected—the woodsmen hadn’t been brandishing bows in one hand and shovels in the other. Instead, they’d come with questions, and congenial ones at that. They had gone out of their way to make Chaval’s envoy feel welcome.
Amaya couldn’t understand it. These people had an independent streak that would make an Ebaran nationalist blush. After Arkadian independence, the Highlanders had driven out the magi and Edehan clerics and essentially created their own little province up here in the mountains. They still voted in elections, obviously, but that and a pittance of taxes was about the limit of their interaction with the Arkadian government.
It took her an entire day of schmoozing to finally figure it out. All Chaval had done was turn their isolationism into a weapon. He had sold himself as an outsider, a man willing to go after the corruption of the status quo and bring real change to the country. It wasn’t all just pandering, either—from a certain perspective, his credentials as a rebel were entirely earned. He hadn’t merely promised change, after all: he had delivered it all across western Arkadia. He had fought the system and won.
What these people thought they were going to get out of Industrialization, of course, she hadn’t a clue. Chaval conveniently never mentioned the conscription of his urban masses into factory drollery or the systematic clearing of wildlife that his machines entailed. Instead he showed them new weapons they could use to defend their homes from the “magi elites,” and they loved him for it.
“Soroshi,” a male voice said from behind her.
Amaya turned. She was standing on deck outside the cabin about twenty meters from Chaval as he spoke with group after group of Highlanders from other villages. The man walking towards her was one of Chaval’s other guards, and from his expression she could tell there was something wrong.
“Problem?” she asked.
He nodded, putting his hand on her arm and gently leading her away from the nearby locals. Chaval had instructed all of his people to treat her “like a lady” whenever she was in the view of the public, and in general they were pretty good about staying in character.
“I just got a report from Lawson,” he said, his voice hushed. Like many of the Dusties, he looked about as comfortable in a suit as a wild vretarg, but at least his other mannerisms were reasonably controlled.
“And what did he say?” she asked as she faked a sip at a glass of wine. It was so screlling cold up here in the mountains that the glass was like ice on her fingers.
“They’re going to leave Cadotheia.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I told Chaval that they’d leave as soon as they could. Do you know when?”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “There’s a freight rail with a few passenger cars leaving just after noon.”
Amaya resisted the urge to swear. Chaval had ignored her warnings, and now they were stuck up here in the mountains two hundred kilometers from civilization.
“Give me a minute,” she murmured, and made her way over to their boss. She slipped behind him easily and managed to catch the corner of his eye.
“One moment, gentlemen,” Chaval said, stepping away from the gathering of idiots. He kept a smile on his face, but she could see the annoyance in his eyes. He hated being interrupted. “What’s the problem?”
“They’re fleeing the city,” Amaya told him. “Just like I said they would.”
His lip twitched slightly, but otherwise his cool expression remained intact. “Earlier than I expected…”
“I could send orders to stop them,” she suggested. “Though I’m not sure our people stand a chance against DeShane’s new protector.”
“They don’t,” he said, a smile forming on his lips. “But you do.”
She grunted. “Our little surprise isn’t going to work if I’m not there personally. Unless you have a lot more of the stuff than you let on.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t…yet,” he said. “But the good news is that getting you a few hundred kilometers in…oh, fourteen hours or so…isn’t as hard as it sounds.”
“You want me to take the Zefrim?” she asked, though of course she already knew the answer.
“It will be ready by the time you get back to the landing site,” he told her. “I’ll have it loop back tomorrow and pick the rest of us up. We might even be back in time for dinner.”
“I just hope this surprise works as well as you think it will.”
“It will,” he assured her, his smile widening. “Even the Vakari won’t be able to stop you.”
Amaya nodded and turned to walk away. A part of her actually hoped their information was wrong, that maybe DeShane would be on an earlier train and escape. Chaval needed a loss, a blow to deflate his ego. Ever since he’d read that journal his arrogance had swelled out-of-control, and sooner or later it was going to cost him—and maybe the rest of them, too.
But really, that wasn’t what she was worried about. The thought of DeShane actually turning into the weapon he wanted was what had kept Amaya from sleeping more than a few hours each of the last few nights. The thought of the absolute horror the girl would unleash, and how Chaval would benefit from it…
Amaya took a deep breath and made her way to the horses. She might be damning the world by leaving DeShane alive, but at least she could do it a small favor by ridding it of a Vakari.
Chapter Seventeen
The train wasn’t exactly what Eve would call luxury comfort, but it was the only one headed to Vaschberg today and neither she nor any of the others had been willing to endure Cadotheia any longer. Which was ridiculous, in some ways, since realistically the trip could have been a whole lot worse.
They hadn’t ended up facing any of the dangers she’d anticipated. Chaval had completely left them alone, and the gun-toting Dusty thugs she’d been expecting to swarm the streets like locusts hadn’t existed at all. As it turned out, the average Cadotheia citizen was more concerned about making a living and feeding their families than harassing a few random magi and validating their preconceptions.