Archon (11 page)

Amma, Taemon, and the boy sat in a triangle, cautiously eyeing one another. Jix, the jaguar, lay nearby. The sun was now below the horizon, so the boy pulled out what appeared to be a small lantern and placed it in the center. The strange thing was that the boy used his hand to turn it on, just like a powerless person. But he was obviously not powerless.

Then again, everything about him was strange. His clothes were heavy, nothing like the light psi fabric from the city but somehow more sophisticated than the rustic clothing from the colony. And his hair . . . What kind of boy wore hair that long? He even had an odd smell, but maybe that was the jaguar.

“I’m Amma, born under the Water sign. And this is Taemon. He’s a Knife.”

The boy frowned and jerked his chin to the side, flipping his hair over his shoulder. “I’m Gevri.”

Taemon and Amma waited for him to tell his birth sign, which would shed much more light on his disposition than just his name. But he was not polite enough to include that information.

“You have dominion, don’t you?” Gevri asked. “Which means you’re from the other side of the mountain. What are you doing here?” He sounded more than curious. He sounded . . .
excited.

“Dominion?” Taemon asked. “Is that what you call it? You used it to kill those men just now, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t kill them,” Gevri snapped. He shot a fiery glare at Taemon.

“We saw you,” Taemon said. “We watched the whole thing.”

“They’re not dead. I disabled them.”

Taemon and Amma exchanged a glance. There was no way to know if this Gevri was telling the truth. It sure looked like he’d killed them. But if they were still alive, then what exactly did “disabled” mean?

“So, is it true? Does everyone in your city have dominion?” Gevri’s tone held no trace of anger now. He was back to sounding excited.

Taemon hesitated. How much could he tell this stranger?

“I thought people in the Republik didn’t have those powers,” Amma said.

“Yeah, well, they don’t,” Gevri said. “For the most part.”

That “yeah” sounded so strange coming from a kid.
Yeah
was a word that Taemon’s great-grandparents might have used.

“For the most part?” Taemon repeated. “What does that mean?”

Gevri’s eyes narrowed. “What are you two doing here, anyway? You shouldn’t be here.”

“We’re looking for someone,” Taemon said. “My father’s missing, and we have reason to believe he came to the Republik.”

Gevri seemed to consider this. “I know of one person who came here from Nathan’s City. Perhaps he is your father.”

“I knew it,” Taemon said, his pulse quickening. “Do you know where he is? Is he okay?”

Gevri frowned. He reached for a twig and twirled it with his fingers over and over.

A sour worry tightened in Taemon’s stomach. Something was going on here, something Gevri didn’t want to talk about.

“My guess is that you shouldn’t be here, either,” Amma said softly after a while, looking at Gevri.

Gevri’s expression hardened. “I’m leaving Kanjai. For good. My father, he . . .” He turned to the jaguar and massaged the huge cat’s back. “I’m not going back. Ever.”

“Okay,” Amma said. “So you ran away from home. But what made you want to go over the mountain?”

Gevri didn’t answer right away. A barely audible rumble came from the direction of the cat, which Taemon took to be the jaguar version of a purr.

“I’m an archon,” Gevri said. “But you’ve already figured that out.”

“A what?” Taemon and Amma asked at the same time.

Gevri looked at them quizzically. “An archon. I have dominion. Why are you so surprised? In your city, everyone’s an archon.” He stiffened. “Who are you? Did my father send you?”

Gevri jumped to his feet, tossing his head and flipping his hair behind his shoulder. He held his chin high. “You tell my father I’m dead. I am dead to him, and he to me. I am not a soldier anymore, and that’s final. As final as death.”

The jaguar was on its feet, too, although Taemon couldn’t remember seeing it move. It stood poised and taut, ready to attack.

Skies, this boy’s moods changed in the blink of an eye!

“Relax,” Amma said. “We’ve got nothing to do with your father.”

“We have that in common, at least.” Gevri’s shoulders relaxed, and he sat down again. “If you’re truly from Nathan’s City, tell me, what is it like? Is it beautiful? A whole city of archons able to use their powers for good. It must be so peaceful.”

Amma and Taemon exchanged a look, an unspoken question passing between them: How much do we tell him?

Taemon cleared his throat. “It can be. But people there are like people anywhere. We have our disagreements and our differences.” That was putting it mildly. “Tell us about your city.”

“Kanjai? That’s not a city. It’s the name of the province. Those buildings you see down there are the Kanjai Military Outpost. Way over here next to Nathan’s Mountain — that’s about as far out as an outpost can get. Which suits my father’s purpose.”

Military outpost? Taemon did not like the sound of that. And what was Gevri’s father’s purpose? Gevri’s tone had been rather dark, which didn’t bode well.

Amma asked the next question: “So, what do people do in a military outpost?”

Gevri shrugged. “Train soldiers, mostly. Some manufacturing since the mines are so close. There’s a big medical facility.”

Skies, all of this had been happening just on the other side of Mount Deliverance?

The shock must have shown on their faces, because Gevri started laughing. “Gods, you don’t know about the war, do you?”

“Just that there is one,” Taemon said carefully. “We’re not even sure who you’re fighting.”

Gevri laughed. “Now I know for sure you’re from the other side of the mountain.” He grabbed a twig and started drawing shapes in the dirt near the lantern.

“The enemy is the Nau, nine nations that joined together against the Free World.” He glanced up and saw their blank expressions. “The Free World are the countries that refuse to give up their sovereign status to the Nau and its regime, its endless regulations and committees. There are only a few of us left now. That’s the Republik, here”— he made a mark in the dirt —“and four countries on two other continents, here and here.

“But, see, on either side of the Republik are Nau nations — here and here.” He made marks in the dirt to the north and south of the Republik. “We’re smack in the middle. We either keep fighting or we lose our country and our freedom.”

The pieces were starting to fall into place for Taemon. If Gevri’s rough map was to be believed, then Deliverance bordered the easternmost edge of the Republik, which meant that the city of Deliverance was situated next to a prime location for a seaport. It also meant that if either of the Nau nations seized the city, they could invade the Republik as a united force.

Deliverance would be a valuable prize to any of these nations.

“The war has been going on for decades,” Gevri continued, “but mostly on the other side of the continent, in the West. Lately, things are heating up here in the East, and my father says that if we don’t throw something new at them, something they’ve never seen before, we could be in trouble. He thinks the archons could save this country.”

Taemon tried to catch Amma’s eye in the lantern light, to see if she’d noticed the same things that he had. But it was too dark to see much of anything except the diagram in the dirt. When he spoke to Gevri, he tried to make his voice sound casual. “I’m curious about these archons. How exactly does your father plan to use them?”

Gevri frowned, and Taemon could see he was torn. He might not believe in what his father was doing, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was ready to compromise his father’s plans by sharing them with two complete strangers. “Let’s just say that it involves training archons to hone their skills for military purposes. I think that’s why they brought your father here, to help with the training. Who better than one of Nathan’s men to show us how to master dominion?”

Taemon swallowed. And what would they do with Da when they realized he was powerless?

“So let me get this straight,” Amma said. “Everyone in the Republik has . . . dominion, but your dad is training some of them to use their power as a weapon?”

Gevri shook his head. He looked around as though he needed to be sure they were truly alone before he explained. “Not everyone. Only the archons have dominion. And no one knows about the archons except the people at the outpost. Not even the rest of the army knows about them. It’s classified.”

Wonderful. A supersecret army of archons that the Republikite army didn’t even know about. And Da was supposed to be training them!

“So why are you telling us?” Taemon asked warily.

Gevri shrugged. “You’ve seen what I can do. There’s no point denying it. Besides, if you’re here to rescue your dad,” he said, nodding at Taemon, “then I’m pretty sure that means you and I are on the same side.”

Taemon wasn’t so sure about that.

Gevri yawned. “Look, we can finish getting to know one another in the morning. Jix and I are beat. Aren’t we, girl? We’ll set up camp nearby and see you in the morning.” The jaguar gave an impressive yawn, her enormous teeth glinting in the lantern light.

“One last question,” Taemon said as Gevri gathered up his things.

“Yeah?”

“These archons . . . They have powers? Still, I mean? They haven’t had any, you know, loss of . . . archon-ness?”

Gevri hesitated, then laughed. “Of course not! You’re testing me, aren’t you? You either have dominion or you don’t. Gods!”

“He can be very testy,” Amma said, making a joke out of it. “Good night, Gevri.”

“Cha, good night,” Taemon muttered distractedly.

How? How did these people have psi? Even if it was true that psi existed outside of Deliverance — and despite what Gevri might say, and what they’d seen him do, that was still a pretty big
if
— Taemon had gotten rid of psi, hadn’t he? So why would the archons still have “dominion”?

Let me help you remember.

Oh, Skies. The Heart of the Earth was talking to him again.

He saw himself in the past, at the temple, when everything was going wrong and Yens was destroying the temple with an earthquake. He remembered what the Heart of the Earth had said to him then.

You must choose. On behalf of your people, you must choose.

He remembered the turmoil he had felt, trying to decide if taking away psi from the world was the right thing to do. Once again, he heard the words in his mind, the words he’d said to the Heart of the Earth:

Let all psi in Deliverance be done away. Let each man and woman work by the power of his own hands. Let this begin the Great Cycle.

Great Earth and Skies! He had taken away psi from his people, the men and women in Deliverance. He hadn’t taken it from the whole world. But then, he’d never imagined that psi existed anywhere else.

When Taemon’s breath returned, it was shaky and shallow. The city of Deliverance was now the most vulnerable place on the planet.

The next morning, the call of nature woke Taemon. Amma was still asleep, and there was no sign of Gevri yet. Taemon wondered if the boy would run back to tattle to his father about the two strangers he’d just met from over the mountain. Skies, he hoped not.

Taemon stretched and stood slowly, still sore from his run-in with the jaguar the night before. He shook his left arm, trying to get rid of the numbness, and took a few steps away from the campsite.

A low, rumbling growl made him freeze in his tracks. He felt it more than he heard it.

Taemon looked up to see Gevri’s jaguar on a rock just above him. Head low, shoulders high, ears pressed back, it stared at him.

In the symbolism of day signs, the Jaguar stood for aggression or attack, and Taemon was feeling that keenly from the menacing cat. They locked eyes for a moment, then suddenly the jaguar was inside his head, invading his thoughts.

Startled, Taemon took a step back. The animal was not sending coherent thoughts, as the Heart of the Earth did, but rather impressions. Strong impressions: a fierce sense of loyalty to Gevri, a sense that the jaguar would do anything to protect the boy. The cat seemed to be searching Taemon for signs of anything that threatened Gevri even in the slightest.

Taemon’s first instinct was to turn and run, but he thought better of it. If the cat wanted assurance that Taemon was no threat, running away would send the wrong signal. He forced himself to hold his ground and calm his thoughts.

Unsure if it would work, he reached out to the jaguar with his thoughts.
I wish no harm. No harm to Gevri. No harm to you. No harm.

An impression of tenuous satisfaction flitted through Taemon’s head, then the cat withdrew. The beast rose to its full height, turned, and sauntered away.

Taemon exhaled. Skies, that was the eeriest thing ever, having a cat connect with his mind like that. He missed the good old days when he had his brain to himself.

When Taemon returned to the campsite, Amma was awake and Gevri was with her. Amma was pulling out some of the food they’d found in the tunnel.