The Restoration of Flaws (The Phantom of the Earth Book 5) (29 page)

“Yes, yes, I recall,” Connor said, trying his best to keep that unwanted image out of his head, “and I reminded you the
Megatherium
eats leaves and grass, not testicles.” They learned in Santonian Village that the minister had put in a request to Supreme Scientist Calamites for an order of the
Megatherium,
giant ground sloths, along with other prehistoric fauna
.
The previous supreme scientist of Project Silkscape, Damosel Rhea, had apparently refused the minister’s repeated requests, citing budgetary and timing issues. Connor hoped his studies of history proved true and that the prehistoric animal was, in fact, herbivorous. Then he thought about the minister’s predilection against the BP.

“Do you believe it will come to battle?” Connor asked.

“I can’t say for sure. We’ll be exposed. Xerean City is highly elevated.”

Connor nodded gravely, looking back to his army. He sensed their dread in the ZPF. He couldn’t blame them. The first of their comrades had begun to drop dead from exhaustion prior to their entry to Santonian Village. The village, known as an entertainment and replenishment center for travelers along the river to and from Farino City and Xerean City, was populated by far more Farinoans than Xereanans. It was built into the granite cliffs on either side of the river tunnel, and though its emergency light had provided scant views, Connor had felt the glares of the villagers who dwelled there. They had looked warily upon his army, queer in its appearance as it marched over the river as far as the transhuman eye could see. The villagers also disliked the impediment the BP had placed on economic production, for the BP advance blocked shipping traffic in both directions on the river.

When the BP had arrived at the village’s main shipping wharf, Connor had halted his army. With his control over the Janzers intact, he forced those who protected the village to take him to visit the village executive. Inside his lavish residence, Maurice Yealoronoaros, Executive of Santonian Village, had sat upon a long diamond bench with his legs crossed. He wore dark green mascara and a wig shaped like twisted phoenix feathers. Four Jurinarian migrant women surrounded him. They wore silk pants and no shoes. Above their waists, animated tattoos of penguins and snowflakes and glaciers danced over their naked skin as they vigorously fanned the executive with long blue-colored fern leaves.

Connor had also felt the sweat budding on his own brow. Though the village’s coolant system relied on gravity, rather than electricity, it wasn’t as robust as Farino City’s had been. He also felt the strain from maintaining a solid layer atop Beimeni River; he didn’t realize how exhausted it had made him until he’d entered the executive’s residence.

“What do you want?” the executive had asked in a thick Farinoan accent, waving his painted nails. “Sustenance for an army of fifty thousand, my boy,” Pirro had replied, and when the executive spouted off obscenities, Connor added, “And your silence.” The executive had made a clicking sound with his tongue and uncrossed his legs. “Why shouldn’t I kill you BP traitors right now?” Yealoronoaros eyed his guards, who stepped into the shivering light provided by torches scattered about. They held pulse rifles, the tips glowing blue, ready to fire.

Connor looked up. He telekinetically lifted the pulse rifles from the guardsmen’s hands and reversed them in midair. Pirro and Connor exchanged a glance, then they both looked at the executive. Pirro raised his brow. “You were saying?”

Over the next few hours, as the blackout had lingered, Connor’s army weaved into the village’s sinuous pathways and rationed sustenance, with the neediest given priority. Connor welcomed the respite in the march. He’d toured the village, greeting many. He’d shaken their hands and kissed their cheeks, disproving all the unfounded rumors about the BP spread over decades by Lady Isabelle and the commonwealth. The Santonians confirmed what Connor had known in Farino Prison: Chancellor Masimovian was, indeed, dead, gunned down, purportedly, by the Beimeni Polemon. Connor had found that last bit hard to believe but held his tongue. He dared not either insult his hosts or attempt to contact the BP, lest he give away his position to the commonwealth.

Connor had placed his faith in the executive, who telepathically ordered his people to provide aid and comfort to Connor’s army. They slept in the streets and alleys and along the shores of Beimeni River. Connor had lain on the sand and closed his eyes but couldn’t sleep, for while he could influence Janzers, he couldn’t hope to subdue the thoughts of two hundred thousand residents. Even if they didn’t contact the commonwealth’s agents in Beimeni City, Marstone might still pick up their musings about the BP army.

More troubling was the news that Prime Minister Carillon Decca had also been executed in Luxor City. “That puts Antosha in Masimovian Tower, my boy,” Pirro had told Connor. Connor learned that Antosha had already announced an inaugural ceremony in Beimeni City, which suggested he didn’t plan on holding on to his “designate” title for very long.

Now Connor turned to Pirro. “If Antosha were to find out about our escape from Farino and our march through the North, do you suppose he’d send Minister Mueriniti provisions, or would he secure his power in Phanes first?”

“That’s the million benari question, my boy,” Pirro said. “Your telekinetic abilities made the difference in Santonian Village. But Yealoronoaros isn’t a skilled telepath. The minister is as talented as your father with the ZPF.”

Connor couldn’t concern himself about a skilled telepath like Mueriniti, not if he were to take on the best of them all: Lady Isabelle and Antosha Zereoue. “I’m prepared for battle,” he said, “but will rely on you to keep our army organized.”

“They and I are yours to command,” Pirro said.

The BP marched for a while, seeing nothing, smelling moss and humidity, listening to the faint movement of water at the river tunnel’s edges, where Connor didn’t solidify it. He knew that water from the commonwealth’s coolant system ran off into the rivers, so if he’d kept the entire width of the river tunnel solid, the top would soon flood.

By the time they arrived at the border of Xerean City, electrical power had returned to the territory. Connor looked up and noticed, as with other parts of the commonwealth he’d visited over the last year, not all the Granville sky panels in Xerean had ignited. He swiveled his head. The wards they marched between lay on the city’s border but weren’t shanty wards. They were built into the granite, not unlike Santonian Village. But unlike Santonian Village, or any other village Connor had seen, the apartment units here were faced with glass and garnet, lined with diamond and sunstone. He closed his eyes, pushing his vision outward, into the ZPF.

Pirro seemed to know Connor had expanded his consciousness. “What does it look like, my boy?”

Connor opened his eyes and observed the sprawling city from above and beyond. “It’s beautiful. The river is wider and has a rougher current here than in Farino City, snaking between canyons of stone, beneath archways within the aqueducts, three in all, built in concentric circles.” The city, he realized, wasn’t so much organized as a singular place hollowed into the earth, as most Beimenian cities were, as it was five separate ones, built into mountains of granite. Or at least they looked like mountains to Connor.

Xerean, the place of sculptures,
he thought.

At the north, south, east, and west sides of the city, the mountains
were
chiseled, as if part of an elaborate sculpture, with the pointed tops and parts of the sides left unsmoothed, but with much of it artfully hollowed into buildings and apartment units, all with tall windows lined with sunstone. The outer and middle aqueducts were built through the mountains of granite, while the inner aqueduct surrounded the central mountain. Water streamed down all the mountainside cliffs into the rushing rapids of Beimeni River. The top of the city center looked like a terraformed plateau, covered with colorful flora—

“Cornelius?” Pirro said.

Connor found his voice. “I see where we have to go,” he said. “The citadel and acropolis are on the plateau in the city center. The stairs leading to the citadel are lined with guardsmen and … the minister.” She looked like a boar standing upon the citadel’s main terrace, gazing in Connor’s direction. Her reddish-orange eyes looked upon him ominously and her fat face twisted into a hideous scowl. He felt a sting in his head, as if diamond daggers twisted in his eyes.

“I’ve lost my connection to the ZPF,” he said. He lost sight of the city’s innards. “She knows we’re here.”

Connor put up his hand and gave the stop signal. His army halted behind him.

“Here they come,” Pirro said.

Connor sensed the nearing transhuman presence as well, though he couldn’t see them. Four specs in the distance soon materialized, flying closer, closer. Connor broke apart slabs of granite from the cliffs on either side of him and brought them over his army’s vanguard. He tried to reach the approaching transhumans in the ZPF but was blocked. He suspected the minister hindered his connection. Finally, four guardsmen of Xerean Citadel arrived, hovering upon rocketcycles.

“Cornelius Selendia,” one of them said, and when Connor nodded, “you are denied passage through Xerean City.”

“On whose authority?”

“Minister Nataya Mueriniti.”

Not Antosha Zereoue,
Connor thought. “I will speak with her in person.”

The guards looked at each other, hesitant to decide. Then Connor sensed their communications in the ZPF, though he couldn’t discern what they said, or to whom they spoke.

“We will escort you to Xerean Citadel,” a different guard said.

Connor looked to Pirro, who nodded. In his head, Connor heard Pirro’s voice:
If she’s willing to speak with you, my boy, there’s a chance.

Connor moved the granite slabs away from the vanguard, leaning them against the river banks. A guard descended to Connor and turned the rocketcycle around, Connor assumed, for him to hop on the back.

“I can’t keep the river top solid and go with you,” Connor said. He’d need his full concentration in Mueriniti’s presence. “My army must be allowed to shelter in the city. You have my word they will not harm any Xereanan.”

Again, the guards looked at each other and communicated through the ZPF. One of them said, “The army will remain at the base of Mount Lilien.”

Connor led his army over the river, beneath the outer, middle, and inner aqueducts, into the city center and Mount Lilien, topped by the terraformed plateau, citadel, and acropolis. A thin sheet of waterfalls fell over the wharf, which surrounded the cylindrical granite mount. It was so wide that from where Connor stood he couldn’t see the other end where it curved. Parts of it contained archways through which Xereanans lingered. They dressed in bodysuits and lab coats, primarily, though some wore tunics. All had bronze skin that looked taut and vibrant.

Connor kept the river’s top layer solid until all his army made it safely to the sands, the wharf, and the carved-out base of Mount Lilien. They lifted off their Janzer visors and helmets and mingled with the crowd. Connor unfroze the river top and stepped over the sands, following the guards.

“He can’t come with you,” one of them said to Pirro.

Pirro put his hand on Connor’s shoulder. “He’s not going anywhere without me, my boy.”

“Then neither of you will meet with Minister Mueriniti.” The guard pushed his head towards the army. “And they’re all under arrest.”

Connor exhaled deeply. He didn’t come this far to be stopped by these guardsmen or their minister. “Pirro, stay here with our men and women.” And he sent:
If I’m betrayed, you must lead them out of here to the great city and finish it.

Reluctantly, Pirro turned away, and Connor began the schlep up a long staircase to the middle of Mount Lilien, where hundreds of cylindrical elevators stood in wait. He and the guards took one that zigzagged through the stone.

When the alloy door spun open, the citadel, prehistoric fauna, Beimenian flora, twenty more guardsmen, and the minister awaited them. The ancient animals grazed in grasslands on either side of the citadel, while a creature of a different sort awaited Connor’s arrival. The minister’s layers and layers of silk robes and sashes in her long, wavy hair flowed in the strong artificial gusts. She wasn’t alluring in the way her city was, but the way she stood with one foot in front of the other, her head slightly turned, her lips lifted in a crooked smile that might’ve been a sneer, held an elegance Connor didn’t expect.

He looked up beyond her to the glass dome of Xerean Citadel shimmering under the territory’s red Granville sun. The Flags of Beimeni and Xerean Territory flapped from carbyne poles in the autumn-scented winds.

He turned back to the stairs and took cautious steps. His escorts rejoined their comrades, who stood in formation on either side. Though their arms were bare, they wore carbyne armor and helmets, with slits in front of their eyes, noses, and mouths, flecked with sunstone. They held their diamond swords with both hands on the hilts, the points on the ground. Connor felt all their eyes upon him as he ascended to the dais where Minister Mueriniti stood.

She looked him over suspiciously, flapping her long eyelashes in a way that made her cheeks jiggle. She took a fisherman’s grip of his chin, moved his face to one side, then the other, examining him. Connor’s heart pounded and his mind raced. He sensed the minister searching his consciousness. Had he erred in bringing his army to Mount Lilien? Should he have found another way to Beimeni City?

“My, my, so it
is
true,” Mueriniti said.” She released him. Connor rubbed his jaw. “Jeremiah Selendia has a second son.”

“He had
three
sons,” Connor corrected. He didn’t feel a need to lie to the minister, given her telepathic reach. “My brother Hans died in a Jubilee and my brother Zorian is … estranged.”

“Is he?” The minister inclined her head and lifted her lips, then looked toward her guardsmen on the stairs.

Animated tattoos of sea life.
Connor was so distracted during his ascent that he’d missed them. “Zorian?” he said, wondering if this were some trick, some illusion the commonwealth was using against him.