The Severed Tower (35 page)

“Trading … For a specific White Helix?” It didn’t make sense.

“She’s not just a White Helix. She’s Tiberius’s
daughter.
”

Mira’s eyes widened in shock. “As in Tiberius
Marseilles?
”

Holt just nodded. Mira looked back to Avril, at the other end of the gym, with new curiosity. Tiberius Marseilles was a famous figure and for all the wrong reasons. He was powerful—the founder and leader of the Menagerie pirate guild. And frightening. She knew, she had dealt with him once, long ago, made a deal and almost gotten killed for it. Her reward, her only reward, had been the Solid she’d used to make Ravan help her rescue Zoey, and it was no small thing to get, that Solid.

“Did you know her?” Mira asked, eyes still on the girl.

“No. She left long before I showed up. Didn’t exactly see eye to eye with her dad. Not like her brother, anyway.”

“Archer?” The pieces were starting to fit.

Holt nodded. “He’s dead now. It’s why Ravan’s here.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Archer and Avril aren’t Tiberius’s natural children,” Holt said. “He traded for them, at great expense. Twins, Heedless like himself, a girl and a boy. He wanted a legacy, something to last once he was gone. Archer and Avril would have carried on the Marseilles leadership of the Menagerie into the future, but Avril didn’t stick around. She came here.”

Across the distance, Avril caught Mira’s gaze for a split second before she sat down with her men, crossed her legs, rested her palms on her knees, and closed her eyes. Silence fell over the gym as the White Helix’s meditation began.

Something occurred to Mira. Something dark. “How did Archer die, Holt?”

His voice was low. “That’s not something I like talking about.”

“If things are going to be anything like what they used to be between us, I think you have to.”

Holt didn’t look at her, just stared at the ground, thinking. Whatever he had to say, whatever the truth was, it wasn’t something he liked dredging up. Mira felt trepidation, waiting for him to respond. It was what she had wanted to know, of course, but she hoped whatever it was didn’t shatter the rest of her feelings for him.

“Like I said, I never knew Avril. She left before I got to Faust,” Holt finally said, and Mira had to slide closer to hear. “But Archer I knew. For a while he was a friend. He was … Volatile isn’t the right word. He swung one way or another, and you never knew what he might do or when. Lavished his friends one second, then threatened to have them executed. When he was good, he was very good. When he wasn’t, he … wasn’t.”

Holt kept staring at the wooden floor, slowly tracing patterns in the dust with his finger while he talked. Mira had only heard his voice this conflicted when he’d told her about his sister, about how he felt responsible for her loss.

“Archer was in love with a girl at Faust,” Holt continued. “Her name was Evelyn. Pretty girl, hair almost as dark as Ravan’s. She was a cook, had a food stall in the Commerce Segment, made these really great puffed pastries. Always reminded me of Pop-Tarts, you remember those?”

Mira did, and smiled in spite of herself. She liked the strawberry ones best.

“Archer loved Evelyn, but it wasn’t mutual. She loved someone else. She told Archer, told him nicely even, and that was not a smart thing to do.” Holt stared at the patterns he’d made in the dust on the floor. “Sometimes I wonder how obsessed he would have been if she’d just given in to him once or twice. He would have moved on, found something else, it was his way. He couldn’t hold onto any one desire very long.

“But she didn’t. She refused him. Pointedly. And Archer Marseilles was definitely not used to that. He went to his father. Tiberius rarely denied him anything, especially things he thought were trivial, like some little girl who made pastries in the market. He decreed they were to be married. The next day. So Evelyn and the other boy did the only thing they could.”

Mira could guess what it was. “They ran.”

Holt nodded. “Tiberius was furious. Now it was serious—someone had defied the Menagerie leader, and that was something he couldn’t let stand. So he sent Ravan and me to find them. It was what we were good at, after all,” Holt said with a note of bitterness. “Pastry cook and a blacksmith, both about fifteen? Yeah, they didn’t make it very far. Didn’t know how to move fast or cover their tracks, and they certainly didn’t know how to handle someone like Ravan. It wasn’t much of a chase, is what I’m saying. We brought them back, and when we did, they dragged the boy off to the gallows and Evelyn up to Archer’s room.

“They started my tattoo that night,” Holt said, his voice growing more animated with repressed feeling, and Mira felt a chill build in her. “It was my reward. Was going to start with a star point, a rare thing, but Tiberius was grateful, and generous when it came to Archer. I didn’t even feel the needle, I just stared up the Pinnacle to Archer’s room. I could see the lights there, flickering, candles or a lantern. I knew what was going to happen there. I could hear the crowd roaring at the gallows. I knew what was going to happen there, too.”

Holt studied his half-finished tattoo. “I looked down at the thing forming on my wrist, and … it was hideous to me. Bigger it got, the more dread I felt. I told them I needed a break, told Ravan I’d be back. She gave me this odd look, I remember, like a part of her knew or guessed, but, still, she didn’t follow me. At the time I didn’t think she would have understood. I’m still not sure she would have.”

The statement was an admission of just how close Holt and Ravan had been, but Mira’s views on everything now were so conflicted, she wasn’t sure what she felt about it.

“I moved fast as I could, knew I could only save one of them, there wasn’t time for both. I chose Evelyn. I don’t know why, maybe because I knew her better, the girl with the Pop-Tarts. Maybe because I thought her fate was going to be worse than the boy’s. Who knows.” Holt looked out through one of the gaping holes in the gymnasium, watching the lightning flash outside. “I went to Archer’s room, I burst inside—and I’d gotten there before it happened. He’d pinned her on his bed, he had a knife. I told him to stop, to get off her. Archer just stared at me. Then he laughed. He didn’t really believe I’d do anything to stop him. After all, I’d always stood by before, everyone had—stood by and let him do whatever he wanted—but … not this time. I told him I’d shoot him between the eyes if I had to. Told him he had to let her go. He didn’t listen, he just laughed again, told me I could stay and watch if I wanted, and then moved back towards her with the knife. So I shot him.”

Mira exhaled her tension. She wasn’t sure what she felt.

“It was clean, one bullet,” Holt said, his voice a whisper once more. “The girl screamed, I remember that. I grabbed her and pulled her out of there, got my things and left. We barely made it out before they sealed the city. Worst part was, coming back down—we heard the cheers at the gallows, we knew what had happened. I saved that girl’s life, but there wasn’t any gratitude. She didn’t look at me with any less revulsion than she had Archer. I remember that, too. Maybe if I’d saved them both, but … I didn’t.”

“What happened to her?” Mira asked.

“Covered our tracks for three days, laid false trails. I knew Tiberius would send Ravan, and that he would want me dead, but she never found me. Not sure if that was because I knew her so well—or if she let me go. Either way, I set the girl loose, got her on a Landship for Winterbay. Never heard from her again.”

Holt kept his stare on the floor. Mira watched him sit there, reliving everything, torturing himself all over again. She knew how he felt, she suddenly realized. All this time she felt distant from him, even looked down on him for just
almost
being in the Menagerie, but the truth was, she was no better. She’d made similar mistakes. She’d tried to fix them in similar ways, and she lived with the consequences, just like him.

Mira reached out and pulled Holt to her. He rested his head on her shoulder as she ran her fingers through his crazy, unkempt hair.

“Why do we … make our decisions after it’s too late?” Holt asked quietly. “Even when they seem obvious. Why don’t we make them right there and then, instead?”

It was a question Mira had asked herself many times. “I don’t know.”

They both sat there staring out at the ever-darkening landscape beyond the walls of the crumbled gym.

33.
AMBASSADOR

EVERYTHING WAS DARK AND SILENT.
Peaceful even. But within all the blankness, Zoey sensed something like movement. Wavering bands of light floating in the emptiness, but not of any specific color. It seemed, instead, like a mix of all of them, blended into a spinning shape that was there and not there, always just out of view.

Zoey had seen colors like this before. When she was with the Royal and his Hunters. It was how their presences manifested in her head. Which meant, wherever she was, a similar presence was close to her now.

Scion. You are safe.

It was a projection of pure sensation shoved into her mind, and the words were the closest Zoey could get to its most intrinsic meaning. It was exactly how the Royal communicated with her, but this was not that presence. It was different. It wavered at a different speed.

Zoey stirred and opened her eyes, and was surprised to find the real world just as black.

As she did, another “presence” made itself known, this one of a more physical variety. It was hairy and warm. It whined and pressed against her. Zoey smiled in spite of everything, as it licked her face.

“The Max…”

The dog was just a dark, squirming shadow in all the black, and when Zoey tried to pet him she found she couldn’t. Something hard and cold surrounded her on all sides, like a metallic coffin, and she couldn’t move.

The realization brought with it a surge of memories. She remembered the Gravity Well flickering and fading to nothing, and the sound of the giant city above her collapsing.

Zoey’s smile vanished. Panic sunk in. She was trapped. Buried alive surely, in some dark hole, crushed underneath all the weight of Polestar’s remains, and she would never be found. She would lay there, imprisoned, unable to move, until the darkness finally faded. The thought was terrifying. Zoey screamed and squirmed in the tiny, metallic space that was her tomb, trying to—

The walls of the coffin lifted powerfully and slowly up and off her. Gears and actuators twisted, mechanics hummed. It was a machine of some kind, held aloft by five giant legs. The world around her groaned and rumbled as the thing somehow displaced the impossible weight of the ruined city which had buried it.

Max barked wildly, and Zoey pulled him close against her. She knew now what had been resting on top of her, and it was more than just the ruins of Polestar.

It was an Assembly walker. The one without any colors, the one that had been following her, the one that appeared right before everything came crashing down and covered her at the fall.

Scion. Be still.

The flickering light from the thing’s energy shield pushed the darkness away and surrounded them in a curving sphere that stretched about ten feet in every direction. Beyond that, Zoey could see the remains of Polestar, a now solid, crumpled mass of wood and metal and pipes and shattered glass, all of it pressed heavily against the walker’s shield, the only thing protecting them from being crushed.

There was an electronic, distorted rumbling, and Max growled at the sound. Zoey’s first impulse was to push away from the machine, but there was nowhere to go. Not here.

Scion. You are safe. Be still.

Zoey didn’t feel reassured. What was she going to do? The shield around them seemed to flicker more and more, like it was weakening. With all the weight pressing on it, she wasn’t surprised. How long until it finally gave out? Her panic rose, she felt tears forming.

Scion. Be still. We are here.

But we’re trapped.
She instinctually projected her thoughts, just like the Royal had shown her.
Are we … going to die?

There was a pause before the walker responded.
Die. Cease to be.

It seemed unsure, as if having difficulty understanding the concept. She wasn’t sure why, but the idea of death to the Assembly was not something well understood. Somehow, death, while possible, was not a forgone conclusion for the aliens, and the concept carried a tremendous weight.

No, Scion,
the walker projected back,
we can remain. But you must understand.

The shield outside flickered brightly, the weight of all the metal and wood and debris pressing down on it groaned. The ruins were winning, it looked like. The shield would fall soon.

We can shift. But you must touch us.

Zoey couldn’t make sense of that. Maybe she had translated it wrong, or maybe there was simply no real translation.

I don’t understand,
she thought.

We can shift. Somewhere else.

Zoey thought back to the first time she saw the walker, how it appeared from thin air in a flash of light. It had done something similar at the Crossroads. Maybe “shifting” meant … teleporting? Could it get them out of this place and back into the open air?

Yes.
The machine sensed her thoughts.
Touch us and we will shift.

The shield flickered again, the city’s corpse rumbling. Zoey didn’t hesitate. She held onto the Max with one hand and thrust her other up, touching the undershell of the armored walker.

No. Touch us.

The ruins groaned horribly. The Max barked wildly. Zoey felt her panic begin to rise again.
I am!

No. Touch
us
.

Her hand was firmly pressed into the walker’s metallic plating, she
was
touching it. But … was the machine really who she was communicating with? Or was it the complex crystalline shape inside? If so, then how did it expect her to touch it?