The Restoration of Flaws (The Phantom of the Earth Book 5) (14 page)

“I am.”

“Ah … so be it, send the Legend and Captain Holcombe, but how do you know we can trust Barão’s daughter?”

“She will serve, or she will die.”

Hydra Hollow

300 meters deep

The latest debriefing ended the same as the rest: news that more BP were apprehended in the territories, from Haurachesa in the South to Dunamis in the West to Volano in the Northeast and Ope in Central—all brought to Farino Prison.

Verena exited the confab and roamed the pathways around the tens of thousands of tents and displays where the Liberation Front’s day went about as any other. Merchants crafted goods from whatever synisms and raw materials they scraped together; Polemon bid and warred over trinkets that would be considered junk in Palaestra; and children, mostly unknown in the Beimeni zone, found entertainment in limestone pits of the Polemon zone.

She neared the auction tents. One group argued over the price for a clay jar. Another fought for a bauble. One after another, they lifted their bids higher in an attempt to claim ownership over a sculpted heart of birch wood in the shape of a Vivoan grower, the grower’s hand near her head, looking up, as if to the Granville sky.

Verena turned away from the tents and approached the little ones, who traversed their obstacle course constructed out of stone and clay. They climbed on top of rocks, scampered up and down twisted wood, clawed over one another, screamed, and flapped—all except for Jocelyn, who lingered near the herb garden.

The girl dug her shovel deep. She was filthy, from her cape down to her deerskin galoshes. She melded with the tents and wood and the crowd around her. She whipped her head around, saw Verena, and took off. Her head scarf sailed to the floor.

Verena picked it up and followed.

At the first intersection, a man and his son cut in front of Verena. She lost her view of Jocelyn, then spotted her through the labyrinth of sellers and buyers, slipping between two women in conversation. Verena twisted and pushed through the crowd. At a new intersection, she bumped into a man whose bronze skin crinkled and folded over into so many layers she wondered if he’d ever once been to the Fountain.

Verena gasped when he fell. “Please forgive me!” She couldn’t comprehend how a transhuman other than a judge on the Great Court could appear so frail, with skin that hung, splotched and discolored. The elderly man waved his hands and told her not to bother, but she helped him up anyway.

“You’re exquisite, and kind,” he said, “I’m glad to have met you.” He kissed her hand and patted it. “Thank you.” He moved on.

Verena searched, tent after tent, Polemon after Polemon until she spied Jocelyn, who peeked at her from behind a tent.

She giggled and disappeared.

She’s taking me though the bazaar as if she’s the strategist. I like the child
, Verena thought
.
She took a different path to cut Jocelyn off. When the child turned, Verena cut in front of her.

Jocelyn pouted.

Verena tied the scarf around her head. “Come with me.”

Jocelyn took her hand, and Verena brought her to a stone bench. “Why don’t you play with the other children?”

Jocelyn sucked in her lips and plucked the dirt from beneath her nails. “I’m not like them.”

“What do you mean? They look just like you, nice boys and girls who’re having so much fun carving out caverns in the clay and climbing—”

“I’m a BP spy, like my brothers.” Jocelyn didn’t sound like a preadolescent girl. She reminded Verena not a little bit of herself at that biological stage of development.

“I bet you are,” Verena said, “taking a strategist like me for a loop through the market.”

Jocelyn’s eyes widened. “You’ve been on commonwealth missions? Did you see Mars? Or Neptune? Or the sun? The real mountains and forests on the surface?”

Verena felt lighter than air, freer than she had in years, decades even, in this child’s presence.

“Did you see ponies?” Jocelyn was saying. “Sheep? I
love
sheep and those noises,
bada-bada-bada
.”

Verena pushed a lock of Jocelyn’s auburn hair behind her ear. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything all that special, but you know what?” Jocelyn tilted her head. “One day when all this is over and we can go back to Beimeni, I’ll take you with me to Vivo, and we’ll find a plot of land with—”

“A
true
garden.”

“Yes,” Verena said, smiling, “with ponies and cows and donkeys and geese and sheep, lots and lots of sheep.”

“Can’t we go there now?”

“Well, kiddo,” Verena breathed, and rubbed her knees, “I’d love to, but there’re people out there who don’t like what we’ve done—”

A gong pounded.

Verena and Jocelyn jumped to their feet and turned to the brim, as did the crowd in the bazaar. She took Jocelyn’s hand, and they scurried through the crowded pathways. When they cleared the last tents, Verena saw a man, blindfolded, his hands tied with rope behind his back, his shirt ripped, neon tattoos depicting sea life down his arms and over his chest.

Jeremiah emerged from one of the adjacent tunnels. He lifted the blindfold. The man’s eyes appeared dark with bruises. Snot dripped from his nose.

“Found him snooping around the Spa of Delphi,” said a woman in government fatigues. Her dark matted hair poked through her bandana.

“Zorian,” Jeremiah said, exasperated, “what’s a father to do with you?”

“Forgive me … for my …” Zorian drooled and his eyes sank. “I didn’t … I didn’t … mean for … so much trouble … to … to … to come to our … family or … to our people.”

Verena knelt to Jocelyn. “Hey, kiddo, I want you to go to your garden, all right?”

Jocelyn bobbed her head back and forth, and her sausage curls bounced. “A Polemon isn’t afraid of anything, and neither am I.”

“I know, and you
are
a Polemon, and a Polemon should understand when—”

“He’s a liar!” said a man in a burgundy cape.

“Hang him!” another said, his body as thin as benari coins.

“Traitor!” a woman said, her fist clenched and raised.

“He must face justice for our comrades who’ve been captured and tortured and killed in the East!” another woman said.

Jeremiah pushed his hands forward in steady, calming motions and called for civility.

Just like Chancellor Masimovian
, Verena thought.

Turning away, she climbed the limestone stairs while Jeremiah told his commandos to blindfold Zorian. Jocelyn grabbed Verena’s hand, and Verena knelt to her. “Dear child,” she said, “where I go you cannot follow.”

“I’ll find a way inside,” Jocelyn said.

Of course, she would.
Verena pressed her lips together and sighed. She held Jocelyn’s hand, and they followed Jeremiah and Zorian and the contingent of commandos through the tunnels and into a claustrophobic room surrounded by Granville panels and workstations.

“This is no place for her,” Jeremiah said, nodding to Jocelyn.

“I’m a Polemon!” Jocelyn said. “And you’ve never said anything before!”

Jeremiah appeared bemused. Verena bent to Jocelyn and told her she’d have to wait outside with a commando. “Fear not, I’ll be right in there.”

“I’m not afraid,” Jocelyn said.

“I know,” Verena said, “but you may not enter.”

“That’s not
fair!
”

A commando escorted Jocelyn away. She pouted but did not fight.

The stone and wooden door closed with a
thwump
. Jeremiah placed his son in a chair under a spotlight and removed the blindfold.

“How much have you divulged? How soon will the Janzers burst through these walls?”

“I don’t … know,” Zorian said. “I told … I just … I just … met with her.”

“With whom?”

“Lady Isabelle.”

Jeremiah grimaced.

So the Polemon spies had the right of it,
Verena thought.
Jeremiah was right to evacuate Blackeye Cavern. It’s an absolute miracle they’ve held together this long …

“Father?”

Jeremiah scrunched his forehead between his thumb and forefinger.

“You met with Lady Isabelle?” Jeremiah said.

“Yes … I … told her—”

“You met with Lady Isabelle!” Jeremiah repeated.

“I met … with … Lady Isabelle,” Zorian said, and Verena sensed his sadness, sensed his regret. He looked pitiful, with lacerations and bruises across his face.

Don’t be fooled
, she told herself,
you’ve seen his kind before. You’ve seen this method of deceit from Antosha.

Zorian’s speech slurred. “I told her where to find Blackeye Cavern.”

“Why is he talking like this?” Jeremiah said to his commandos.

“After I left her … I learned … a meeting near the Spa of Delphi … so I came to the spa …”

“Get him water,” Jeremiah said.

“I wanted to see you but couldn’t find the entry to the Hollow as I knew it. I searched, and searched, and found the false walls and that’s—”

“He fought us,” one of the commandos said, “took out thirty-two commandos—”

“Dead?” Jeremiah said.

“Knocked unconscious, but it took five of us to hold him down, even after we hit him with four darts, so we hit him with six more.” The scruffy commando handed Zorian a glass filled with water. “These are about the only honest words you’re likely to hear from this one.”

“Did the Janzers or hounds follow you?” Jeremiah said. “Does Lady Isabelle have the Hollow’s location?”

“I won’t help her anymore.” Zorian’s slur worsened. “That’s why I came here, I wanted to warn you … I wanted …”

“My gods,” Jeremiah said. He leaned closer to his son’s bruised face. “What would you do if you were me?”

“I … know,” Zorian said. He leaned and drooled. “That’s why I came here, I came here, Father, you got to believe me, to warn you … love you, Father, so sorry.” He paused, catching his breath. “Sorry for what I’ve …” He eased into the chair and snored.

“The commonwealth knows we’re here,” Verena said.

“You don’t have a choice,” Verena said. “You must evacuate the Hollow.” Around the table in the cavern, the Leadership nodded and mumbled. Jeremiah clasped his hands and fumbled his thumbs above a scroll with a map of the thirty territories.

“How do you expect us to proceed?” Gage said. “The evacuation of the Cavern isn’t halfway complete, and we’d be flooding the Underground Passage with more stowaways from the West, all while we plan for an unprecedented strike against the Great Commonwealth—”

“We’re handing the chancellor our people on a carbyne platter—” Lizbeth said.

“We were going to have to evacuate in any event, my friends,” Jeremiah said. The Leadership and Verena turned to him. “The day we’ve all feared would come is upon us.” He paused. “Our spies in the RDD indicate that Reassortment has seeped deeper than the Polemon zone in parts of the underground once thought impossible. How much longer do we have until it spreads into the Hollow? Two years? A year? Less? We understood the risk when we built our homelands.”

“The Hollow might not have been designed to be a permanent solution,” Gage said, “but that’s what it’s become for more than four million people. The Underground Passage will be overwhelmed.”

Verena took all this in silently. She’d learned that the passage included the system of safe houses, businesses, waterways, caves, and tunnels overseen by Beimenians friendly to the Polemon cause. But she didn’t know enough about it to have an opinion on Gage’s comments. She did understand Reassortment seepage well enough to know that Jeremiah
had
taken great risk in building his secret enclaves so shallow in the Earth’s crust.

“The passage will handle what it must,” Jeremiah was saying.

“We have a lot more people in the Hollow than the Cavern,” Gage put in. “The safe houses in the West, South, and Central can only hold so many of the unregistered, and we’d be sending a lot more their way. We’d be putting a lot of good people at risk.”

“You’re right.” Jeremiah smiled wistfully. “In addition to the South, West, and Central, we’ll have to go back to the North.”

The Leadership groaned and spoke simultaneously. Verena couldn’t make out any of it.

Jeremiah put up his hands and they quieted. “My eldest son has been begging me for a chance to prove his loyalty to the Front. I’ve thought of a way he can—”

“That submarine left the Block a
long
time ago,” Isaiah said.

“Hear me out.” Jeremiah circled Underground North on the map with his index finger. “The commonwealth believes that the secession movement in the North is long dead. But that’s not entirely accurate.” Jeremiah tapped the map three times over the portion labeled XEREAN TERRITORY. “If we are to have any hope of emptying Hydra Hollow before Reassortment consumes us or the commonwealth buries us, we’re going to have to reopen the passageways in the North—”

“Impossible,” Brooklyn said, “the Northerners cannot be trusted.”

“Hold it.” Verena was lost. “When did the North try to secede from the commonwealth?”

“Before your time,” Jeremiah said.

“On what grounds?” Verena said.

“Fair payment for the commonwealth’s most valuable natural resource.”