ElyriasEcstasy (35 page)

Chapter Twenty

After the raid on the Unsafe, Arvra Finean had been pulled
in for questioning by the local Guard garrison, along with Gator and Pelkra and
Hervo and just about everyone else she knew. The Guard were stirred up,
rattled, angry. It was understandable. What had happened on the night when the
power was cut off was unprecedented in the little border town’s history, so far
as anybody knew. The people hadn’t exactly risen up against their oppressors,
but the disturbance that night had approached the uproar of a riot and
certainly it had interfered with normal Guard operations.

The black-clad authorities wanted a return to normalcy—which
was, naturally, a state of complete repression. It wasn’t, however, quite
working out that way.

Arvra had realized, from a few slips made by the clumsy
local Junior Interrogator, that she’d been under some kind of surveillance
since before the raid into the Unsafe. It wasn’t much of a stretch to guess
that the Lux had ordered her watched in case Urna came looking for her for some
reason. That the fugitive Weapon actually had showed up here was pure
coincidence.

During the interrogation, she claimed total ignorance. This
succeeded in seriously frustrating her questioner, which was entertaining for
her. For maybe the first time in her life, she felt like the Guard didn’t have
the upper hand.

Still, they had seen her with Urna. They plainly suspected
that she had something to do with the raid. The Guard had seen the vehicles
leaving town. The Junior Interrogator also asked her repeatedly about someone
named Cawd Delfel, a name which Arvra could honestly say she’d never heard
before.

It probably would have ended badly for her, one way or
another. She was even regretting returning to the town after disposing of the
transports and leaving the valuable salvage at a secure site on the outskirts
where it could be retrieved later on. She’d had to come back, though. Her life
was here. Her brother was here. She wasn’t ready to go off with the Maji.

But something happened in the course of those
interrogations. The announcement of Urna’s death came. Power had been restored
earlier that same day and the screens were receiving broadcasts. Urna the
Weapon, so the grim-faced commentator said, had died bravely on a
self-appointed mission into the Unsafe. He had not, as it turned out, been
working with co-conspirators after all. Rather, he had taken it upon himself to
fight the Passengers alone. A suicidal act, perhaps, but a courageous deed
nonetheless. That was the story, anyway. It was a very safe bet that the
conditioned public wouldn’t question the specifics, like
how
his body
would have been found. People were told what to believe and they believed it.

After that, the interrogations limped on for a little while
longer. Then the Guard seemed all at once to drop it. Like they didn’t care
anymore. Like, with Urna dead, none of it mattered. They didn’t even pursue the
issue of the salvage foray, probably because they didn’t have any serious
proof. That didn’t usually stop the Guard, but Arvra had come to realize, as
she maybe never had before, just how shiftless a border town contingent of
Guard could be compared with the disciplined, menacing ones at the Citadel. You
likely had to be cut-rate material to get assigned to the border, anyway.

So they let her go. Urna was gone. That meant she wasn’t
even going to get tapped for whore duty any longer. That made her even less
interesting to the Guard.

It was fine by her.

If there were any non-sympathetics in the town, none of them
fingered the salvage crew. No one was able to identify the vehicles’ occupants
and the rigs themselves were never found. Apparently, no threat was great
enough to make these people give up on those supplies they so desperately
needed. Arvra already had plans to smuggle the goods into town and distribute
them. She’d make some profit on the operation, but that wasn’t the point.

Arvra walked back to her small shack feeling exhausted, but
overall no worse for the wear. The house wouldn’t be empty, of course. Frank’s
usual watchers would’ve rotated through while she was detained. But when nobody
answered her coded knock, fear bit at her.

Had they changed the sequence? Was it the regular time to do
it? She couldn’t remember. And anyway, it didn’t matter. No one had told her
what the new one was.

But she shrugged off the fear. This was, after all,
her
place. She banged on the door harder. “Let me in, damn it!” A few seconds later
she heard footfalls. The lock disengaged. A rush of surprise overcame her, and
she sucked in a breath. Then she let it out as a stunned whisper. “Bongo.”

He stepped back and she hurried inside. She’d last seen the
blond-headed Maji member when he, Virge and Urna had parted from her and the
other salvagers outside of the town. Their plan was to bury the crates of
rifles, then come back for them when the weaponry could be disseminated through
their network. Or so Bongo had implied. Arvra had avoided asking direct
questions. The less she knew about the specifics of the underground movement,
the better. So she had decided for herself.

“What’re you doing here?” she asked when the door was locked.

He gave her an impish grin. “I’m glad to see you too.”

She found she wasn’t much in the mood for banter, despite
how handsome and chipper this man was. “Why have you come here? It’s
dangerous.”

“It’s not,” he said. “Not really. The Guard in this town have
gotten awfully lax. People are walking around bragging about the hullabaloo
that went on during the blackout. I was chatting with one guy who said he
pissed on the boot of a Guard member that night. Don’t know if it’s true, but
the fact that anybody would claim it means things have changed.”

She had to concede that, and so she nodded. But she still
wanted to know what he was doing here in her home. Before she could ask again,
however, Bongo lifted a finger, touched it to her lips, and said softly, “Come
and watch. I’m almost done with the healing.”

Bewildered now, she followed. They crossed the room to the
dirty mattress and the form underneath the covers. Her brother. Poor Frank.

Bongo knelt at the bedside. Arvra saw that several strange
objects were placed at what looked like deliberate intervals around her
brother’s head where it rested on the pillow. Some were stone, some crystal,
others metallic. She didn’t know what they were or what the hell Bongo was
doing when he closed his eyes and started making weird gestures over Frank’s
body. She actually jumped a little when he broke into a kind of atonal
chanting.

Her fear returned to her suddenly, the tenor of it
different. She felt something in the air, like a burnt odor making everything
seem heavy. Only there was no smell, just a curious sensation crawling over her
flesh. She rubbed her arms. She wanted to stop this, but made no move to do so.

Frank’s eyes drifted open and shut, according to no obvious
pattern. If he was aware of what was going on around him, he didn’t—maybe
couldn’t—indicate it.

By the time Bongo had finished, Arvra had no doubt she had
just witnessed an Order of Maji ritual. They
had
to have rituals, didn’t
they? Magic was like that. When children played at it, that was what they did. Invented
all sorts of rites and rules. Drivel. Meaninglessness.

Bongo rose, wobbling, to his feet. His forehead was moist.
She could see the strain in his green eyes. They were, she had to admit, quite
attractive eyes.

“Arvra…”

She froze. She’d been about to say something to Bongo. Now
her gaze shot past him. On the bed, with those bizarre objects still scattered
around him, Frank was blinking. But it was the sort of blinking you did when
your eyes were adjusting to light. It was the blinking of someone
aware
that he was blinking. Focusing his eyes. Taking in his surroundings. Conscious.

And he’d spoken her name—

“Arvra.”

Her heart leaped. She tore past Bongo, who only just backed
out of the way in time. She dropped to her knees by the mattress. Her brother looked
at her. Right at her.

“Frank.” She reached toward him. A hand shook itself from
the covers and caught hers. His flesh was a bit damp. His grip wasn’t
especially strong. But it was more animation than he’d demonstrated in a long,
long time. “Frank, it really is you, isn’t it?”

Behind her, Bongo chuckled, a tired, satisfied sound.
“Before we split up, Gator mentioned how he’d tried a few healing spells. I’ve
got something of a knack for them. I thought I might be able to do something
more.”

Arvra could see nothing. The tears had started and she
didn’t, in that moment, imagine they would ever stop. Again, it was fine by
her. She would cry with joy until time ended. Or at least until she ran out of
tears.

The absurdity of that thought struck her, and she let out
what sounded to her own ears like a demented laugh. And then she laughed at
that
.
Frank’s other hand was closing around hers now. He squeezed, and there was
returning strength there. Whatever she had thought about magic and the Maji
didn’t matter now. She could throw out all her old beliefs and disbeliefs.

Everything had indeed changed.

* * * * *

While Lavinia was on her stomach in front of him, Rune
pulled his fingers through her thick black hair and imagined that it was
silver. The texture was all wrong, but when he closed his eyes tightly, he
found the illusion incredibly easy to conjure.

The person who meant the most to him in this world, either
as friend or adversary, had always been Laine. Even without the return of his
own memory, that fact of Rune’s personal history seemed to have asserted
itself. Laine with the silver hair like no one else’s. The name Laine had
replaced that of Urna in his mind somehow, without his even trying. He couldn’t
remember ever actually speaking it, but he heard it clearly now anyway, in his
own voice. Laine. Like a lane, or a path. A way forward, toward the light.

The invisible connection between the name and that seemingly
meaningless nonsense on the Weapon’s walls had come to Rune several nights ago,
and though there was nothing he could do with the knowledge—that was Laine’s
journey to take—it stuck with him. A truth the Lux could never snuff out. He
had contrived to visit the former room of Urna on a whim a few nights previous,
and found that the walls had been stripped and painted over. He found himself
oddly unmoved by this.

Whatever truths the walls had displayed, they were Laine’s
to hold. To Rune, those now-obliterated scribblings meant only one thing. They
were his partner’s ungraceful, stubborn, indomitable attempt to map out a
history he could only sense as an absence.

Rune understood that void. He comprehended it far better
than he had before. Urna had a past, and it was named Laine. Rune had a past as
well. It was called Micah. And that, beyond that wild tale of ambassadors and
betrayals, was all Rune did know. For now.

The doctors were still giving him drugs, but the chemicals
were different. He knew because the times they were administered had changed,
if only by minutes. The Shadowflash program was a strict one of which he was no
longer a part. Not technically. The drugs they gave him had a different scent
too. Then again, everything smelled a bit different to him. A consequence of
his severance from his Weapon, he thought. It had changed him in a physical
sense, as well as mental and emotional ones.

Whether these drugs really were dampening his memory, he
still didn’t know. To find out, he would have to break the cycle, and he
couldn’t very well do that here. Again, it was something he didn’t intend to address.
For now.

He had been reassigned but not re-partnered, which was the
official way of running him in neutral. He knew without needing to be told that
he could not work with anyone else. Not for lack of trying. It simply wouldn’t
work, not with him. He wasn’t like the others in the division, not a pretender
augmented with stimulants. His bond with his Weapon wasn’t simply one of
convenience. So he was now Shadowflash in title alone. Yet Aphael Chav still
wanted to sire him out, to have him spread his seed. He still needed Rune for
something, and so the women kept coming.

Lavinia made a purring sound as he stroked her hair. He had
already made his deposit with her, as it were. But he hadn’t called for the
escort to come take her away. Lazily, he studied the lines of her body, the
fleshiness of her form. He’d never thought to seriously wonder why he seemed to
prefer this female over the others. Yes, she had a certain scrappiness about
her and ran off at the mouth sometimes, but there had to be something more.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked.

The purring stopped. She cranked her head around and gave
him a look that bordered on outright shock. “What?”

He decided that he had committed himself to this, and so
repeated, “Did you enjoy…it?” He hated how awkwardly that came out, but surely
the meaning was clear.

A softening came to her eyes. “Well, yeah. I usually enjoy
it with you. Didn’t you know that? Can’t you tell?”

He found himself shaking his head, very slowly.

She smiled, seeming to find this amusing. “Sometimes, Rune,
I think you’re the silliest man I’ve ever known.” She laughed, turned her head,
and he, with a movement that felt automatic, resumed combing his fingers
through her hair.

Had that been a tender moment just now? He wasn’t sure.
Certainly it put him no closer to understanding his attraction toward this
particular female. But perhaps he didn’t need to know.

For the most fleeting of moments he considered showing her
the old photograph Laine had given him. He had successfully smuggled it into
the Citadel, after the long ground journey back to the Safe’s centermost zone.
He had given his report. He had met with the Toplux himself, just as he’d
hoped. He had handed over the hank of bloody hair and told his tale. Urna the
Weapon was dead. That fabricated truth had been disseminated throughout the
Safe.