Horizon (34 page)

Strand struck an instant later, but not at Aluna. Burning pain ripped through Hoku’s skull, even worse than before. Images of the wooden dolphin appeared in his mind, over and over and over. Strand was beating him with it. Hoku screamed and curled into a ball and silently begged Aluna to hurry.

A
LUNA KNEW SHE WAS LOSING
. Her arms were kelp, her tail as graceful as a dead fish, her strength had fled. The monster that housed Karl Strand attacked her tirelessly, pausing only to tell her how worthless she was, how weak, how disappointing.

She couldn’t help but think of her father, and her heart ached. However much she guarded her heart against him, the words still burrowed deep and tried to rot her from the inside.

Unworthy. Disrespectful. Rude.

A dishonor to the whole family.

A dishonor to all Kampii.

But although the list of her failures might fill one of Hoku’s books, she would never let it be written that she gave up. She would fight until her last breath was taken from her. Strand wanted to kill her, and he probably would. Until then, she intended to make his life as difficult as possible. Let her father at least acknowledge that his youngest daughter was stubborn to the end. Let Karl Strand choke on her bones.

Suddenly Strand’s heads reared back, all six at once, and roared. Aluna covered her ears and tried to protect herself from the deafening sound. “Tomias! My son!”

Hoku’s voice cut through the chaos, his Kampii devices feeding directly to hers.

“Now!” he yelled. “Go now!”

Strand’s scream echoed anger and anguish to every dark place in the cave. His heads swung wildly, even the ones that had been still up until now. They thrashed, hitting one another, snapping their maws in midair. Strand’s cool intelligence was gone, swallowed up by wild, incoherent rage.

Hoku had given her a chance.

A familiar blur of white and brown wings darted overhead. Aluna’s chest tightened and she wanted to whoop with joy. Calli dodged between Strand’s heads, her spear flashing. Calli couldn’t kill Strand, and she knew it. But she was doing her best to keep him angry.

“Aluna!” a voice called — a voice she hadn’t expected to ever hear again. It was followed by the high, shrill neigh of a horse.

Aluna pulled her eyes from Calli and saw Dash and Vachir galloping toward her. They both looked scarred and battered, barely able to hold themselves up. Yet here they were, racing into battle. Racing to help her.

“We have to get in close,” Aluna said. “Stop fighting the heads, go for his heart instead.” Which is what Hoku had done, she realized, but in a different way. He’d gone after Strand’s connection to his son.

Aluna flipped onto her wobbly hands and vaulted onto her tail. Pain flared. For a moment, she didn’t know if she could stand, or if her body had simply had enough. Dash slid off Vachir’s back while the horse was still moving and tucked his shoulder under Aluna’s arm just as she started to fall. She leaned on him and steadied herself, trying to ignore the gentle touch of his hair as it brushed her cheek. He handed her a sword, flipping a switch on the handle so that it burst into flames. Aluna grinned.

Vachir roared her battle cry and raced for Strand’s lizard claws. She bit and tore at the scales with her teeth, then reared up and brought her hooves down with shattering force. Two of the hydra’s clawed toes snapped. Strand bellowed and shifted his weight to the other leg, suddenly far less agile than he’d been a moment before.

Aluna leaned on Dash and hobbled toward Strand, the fiery sword gripped in her right hand. Vachir and Calli kept up their attacks. Strand’s heads snapped and hissed and darted in every direction without reason. When one got close, Dash batted it out of the way with his sword of ice.

“For Tomias!” Strand screeched. “I will kill you for my son!”

Aluna wasted no time. When they got close enough, she drove her sword into Strand’s chest. Strand jerked back and tried to rear up, but his broken feet stopped him. Aluna’s blade snagged on his armored hide. She shoved harder, pushing the tip through skin and muscle and bone.

Strand yelled, “Impudence!”

She pulled out her sword and plunged it in again. She ignored technique, ignored training. She used nothing but her remaining strength and her surging will and the knowledge that — by her side, and in the air, and crumpled somewhere in the back of the cave — her friends were counting on her.
Push
, Anadar’s voice said to her, and she did.

She was not useless. She was not weak. And if she was a disappointment to her father or Karl Strand or anybody, then that was their problem, not hers.

Finally, she found Strand’s heart. A spray of warm droplets covered her hand and she yanked her sword out quick, letting it flow.

Dash dropped his sword and pulled her backward with both hands. Strand’s body fell slowly, like Big Blue the whale drifting to the bottom of the sea to die. She and Dash tumbled to the ground, just out of range of Strand’s death throes.

“You did it, Aluna,” Dash said. His eyes were black and warm in the cave’s shadows, and his voice was just for her. “I never doubted you. Not once.”

Somehow, she found the strength to lean up and kiss him.

A
LUNA AND VACHIR GALLOPED
through the surf toward the cove, and toward the small but growing city of Horizon’s Reach. It had taken them weeks to find the perfect location — a place with easy access to water and sky, to mountains and trees, and to great open spaces. Some of the others had wanted to give up, or reclaim HydroTek or the SkyTek dome. Aluna remained adamant. They needed someplace new. Someplace that hadn’t belonged to anyone before.

As they got closer, Aluna smelled smoke from the forging fires and heard the heavy clank of hammers echoing in the trees and cliffs. They had so much building to do. So much planning. But in every meaningful way, Horizon’s Reach was already home.

She leaned forward and patted Vachir’s neck. “You assured me your injuries were healed,” she said, “and yet here we are, barely trotting back home.”

Vachir whinnied and drove forward, her legs pounding the sand even harder. Aluna laughed and sank low in her saddle. They were both so predictable and stubborn. They should never have been friends, and yet here they were: two parts of the same heart.

The cove nestled between two curved fingers of land, creating a deep, protected bay. With only one small opening to the ocean, Kampii and Deepfell could live safely inside, with or without their breathing devices.

Some Kampii were digging their nests underwater, but a surprising number had chosen surface homes. Aluna wondered if their younglings would take the Ocean Seed and grow their tails, or if a new sort of Kampii would emerge — Kampii who kept their legs and walked Above World. She smiled. What a sight that would be.

“Anadar,” Aluna whispered.

Vachir huffed and took her down a small slope toward a quiet patch of pure white sand. Two ends of a broken spear crossed each other behind a heavy stone that Aluna had hauled up from the training dome in the City of Shifting Tides. No other grave marker had seemed right.

Aluna had been giving Anadar updates almost every day, but this time it had been a week since her last visit.

“Daphine has been voted onto the council to represent the Kampii,” she said. “No surprise there, of course. And her scope will give her an edge. The Humans — that’s what the Upgraders want us to call them — have chosen a man named Kettle. Renowned for his cooking, I think. Hoku was hoping they’d pick Rollin, but Rollin wanted nothing to do with long meetings where you can’t throw things at people.”

Vachir whinnied lightly, sharing the joke.

“Tayan will represent the Equians,” Aluna continued. “You never met her, but you’d like her. Before she was injured, she could have taught you a few things about swords. Master Sefu will speak for the Serpenti, though not many of them are making the long journey through the desert. Flicker is the likely choice for the Silvae, and Prince Eekikee is still deciding whom to appoint. I don’t think we’ll see much of the Deepfell, honestly, but our alliance is still strong.”

A strong breeze raced over the water. Aluna lifted her chin and let it whip her short hair around her face. “Oh, and as for the Aviars . . .”

Calli stood at the construction site for Cloudpoint, what would someday be a graceful spire overlooking Horizon’s Reach, and the home to its Aviars. She held her arms and wings out while a woman with giant green-tipped wings briskly recorded her measurements.

“I don’t need new armor,” Calli said.

“Yes, you do,” her mother countered. President Iolanthe leaned against a partly built stone wall, her one wing folded behind her back, and crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you think, Electra?”

The High Senator snorted. Her left arm hung uselessly at her side, but the injury had done nothing to soften Electra’s attitude. “I think anyone representing us on a council ought to look like a warrior, not some rumpled fledgling fallen from its nest.”

Calli rolled her eyes. “As soon as you two go back to Skyfeather’s Landing, I’m wearing my old clothes again.”

The armorer finished her task, bowed to her president, and flew off. Iolanthe took three quick strides and wrapped her arms around Calli. Calli pressed her cheek into her mother’s shoulder and felt the whisper of a kiss on her head.

“I’m so proud of you, my daughter,” her mother said. “So very proud.”

Calli closed her eyes. “I’m proud of me, too.”

“No, over there,” Tayan said. “I like it better by the door.”

Dash sighed, but Pocket picked up his end of the table eagerly. Dash suspected the boy had developed feelings for Tayan, khan of Flame Heart and newly appointed Equian councillor. He imagined there were worse choices for a first crush, but none came readily to mind.

They moved the table — one of the many artifacts they’d recovered from Karl Strand’s hoard — and Tayan finally seemed pleased.

“We have other homes to furnish,” Dash said. “Perhaps perfecting the table’s location can wait. My family will not arrive for many days. Erke and Gan only left to fetch them a week ago.”

Councillor Tayan smiled. It was unnerving how often she did that nowadays. “Flame Heart and your family are leaving the desert, the only home they have known for centuries. This is a great, terrifying thing we have asked of them, Dashiyn. A great breach of tradition.”

“If they do not wish to come, they —”

“No. Listen,” she said, stomping her hoof. “Change can be a daily battle. A warm fire, a tasty skewer of scorpion, a well-placed table — these details may mean the difference between thinking of Horizon’s Reach as a place to live, and thinking of it as a home.”

“I love the way you talk,” Pocket said, then immediately clamped a hand over his mouth, horrified.

Tayan laughed. “Go. Both of you. It is almost sunset.”

Dash lifted the heavy fur covering the door and blinked in the fading light. He stared at the tiny drawing of a closed fist that Pocket had etched into the skin of his forearm. Odd’s mark. “It is time for new traditions.”

Hoku waited on the beach, just out of the surf’s reach. His vision was slowly returning, thanks to the drops that Nathif and Mags had made for him, but he still preferred to use Zorro’s eyes. He’d gotten used to relying on the little guy during the long weeks after the battle with Strand.

Rollin coming
, Zorro told him.
Apple, maybe?

“Scan her and see for yourself,” Hoku said. His vision switched to analysis mode, and Rollin’s stocky form sprouted labels. None of which said
APPLE
. “Sorry, Zorro. Maybe next time.”

“Sun’s almost down,” Rollin said as she lumbered toward him. “They’re all late, the gobbly basics.”

“They still have six-point-three-one minutes,” Hoku replied easily. “Give or take a few seconds.”

Rollin grunted and lowered herself to the ground. She was old. Older than she looked. But Horizon’s Reach had given her new energy, new purpose. She pored over the city’s planning schematics every night. The ramps and elevators had been her idea, so every person could go every place, whether they had wings or tails or hooves or legs. Given enough time, she’d probably find a way to let the Aviars live underwater if they wanted.