The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) (22 page)

Turning right, she walked up a hill, toward the house she had grown up in. Her parents had sold it the year Morgan entered the academy, and had then moved to a retirement colony on Edsall Minor. Morgan had no idea who had lived there in the years since. Having her own living quarters aboard one of the Solar Carriers, she had never needed to have a house—a real home—of her own.

With the city empty, with the planet feeling as foreign to her as any other hunk of rock in space, she felt compelled to return to the dwelling that she and her parents had called home so long ago.

The house looked exactly as she remembered it. The same green metal roof. The same dull gray front door. The same rusted steps leading up to the door.

She could have gone inside without any problems. It wouldn’t have mattered if she did. The house was empty and if anyone eventually returned to it, they would never know she had been there. But rather than enter the premises, she was content to sit on the steps and remember all the times she had raced out the front door on the way to school, all the times she had played outside after class, and all the times candy vendors came by and her mouth watered.

Rather than cheer her up, each of these memories made her shudder because each was a reminder of the round table Vere kept talking about. Breathing loudly through her nose, she groaned and stood up. Vere had been free of the Cauldrons for almost a week now, and Morgan still wasn’t sure if it had been a good idea to rescue her.

Regaining her bearings, she turned and faced the city center and the capitol building. Vere and the others would almost be there by now. If she doubled her pace, she could meet them before they began making their way up toward the king’s chambers. Toward Scrope.

54

Mowbray knew Vere and the other CasterLan refugees had returned to Edsall Dark. Even though he wasn’t bothering to acknowledge any of Scrope’s updates, the communications continued to arrive every few minutes. As if anything that dirty politician could say would make the leader of the Vonnegan Empire change his plans. Regardless, Mowbray was already on his way to Edsall Dark with a fleet of Athens Destroyers.

What Scrope didn’t realize was that Mowbray didn’t care whether Vere retook the capital. He wasn’t concerned with possessing the city or even the planet. That fact should have been apparent when he had appointed Scrope as the planet’s new leader. If he actually cared about maintaining Edsall Dark, he would have found an administrator with Le Savage’s penchant for brutal efficiency and posted him as the planet’s new governor.

What he actually cared about was Vere herself. Not just her but also the idea of her kingdom. He wanted to destroy both. He was well aware of the message she had sent to the leaders around the galaxy. It was rubbish, pure and simple, and he was positive that her time at the Cauldrons of Dagda had done permanent damage to her psyche. That didn’t mean people wouldn’t consider her idea, however. By surviving at the Circle of Sorrow for so long, she had built up a following, had become a symbol of invincibility and determination. People who might once have ignored her message might now be willing to humor the notion.

Of course, the idea would never work, at least not the way she envisioned it. Whatever the CasterLan Kingdom did become would quickly be corrupted by the people in control. Good intentions would mutate into various tribes battling in an endless series of wars until someone like Mowbray came in and conquered the entire territory.

As he saw it, that was the inevitable outcome. He could simply wait for it to happen. He was certainly patient enough to bide his time. The problem, however, was that he couldn’t let Vere succeed in executing her plan. Not because he was afraid it would work, but because it would mean she had been successful in defying him. The Vonnegan Empire was built upon the premise that no one should question its ruler, that doing so would always result in pain and misery. If Vere succeeded in her plan, as trivial as it was, the only thing the galaxy would see was that someone had stood up to Mowbray and lived. Allowing that to occur, even if only for a few days, was not possible.

A ruler’s time is always limited if they are having to quell rebellions and disturbances. The only ruler who has a chance of holding onto power indefinitely is the one who prevents uprisings from starting in the first place. Vere’s plan, no matter how asinine it was, was definitely a form of uprising against him. She was supposed to be his prisoner, not a leader willing to transform her kingdom. His duty was to remind her of that.

He would kill her once and for all, as he now knew he should have done two years earlier. He would make an example of her and everyone else who dared return to Edsall Dark. He might even destroy the entire planet, just to send a message to the rest of the galaxy that they had best not take part in Vere’s scheme if they wanted to keep whatever meager kingdoms they still controlled.

55

Everywhere Vere walked, she was struck by the difference between the Edsall Dark she had known and what it had become.

When she was a child, CamaLon’s spaceport had seemed to be the busiest place in the entire universe. It was so hectic in fact that her father hadn’t allowed her to go there unsupervised until she was a teenager.

To ensure she wasn’t tempted to sneak off on her own, he had given the young Vere a smile and said “Many a ship’s captain in that spaceport would love to kidnap a cute little girl.” He patted her head. “You would be halfway across the galaxy before anyone knew you were gone. Your mother and I would never see you again.” The words had done the trick; she had been too petrified to go there without permission.

Each school in Edsall Dark’s capital used to have hundreds of children laughing and playing in the courtyards during recess. When playtime was over, teachers could be heard delivering their lessons, along with children answering the questions posed of them. She remembered her own time as a student, passing notes, copying Galen’s homework, and making jokes when the teacher wasn’t paying attention.

The city, the entire planet, had always possessed a unique character for as long as she had known it, even after leaving for nearly a decade and then coming back. Nothing had changed in those years of self-exile. Now, though, the spaceport was barren except for the Griffin Fire and the few other CasterLan ships that had come through the portal with her. There were no freighters dropping off shipments or rigs loading vessels with cargo to be taken across the galaxy. The schools had no children and no teachers.

“It’s like no one has ever lived here,” Vere said as she continued walking toward the tallest building—the capitol building and the king’s chambers atop it.

As they made their way through the city center, Traskk let out a series of low hisses. The quiet, along with the collection of buildings devoid of any people, was as unsettling to the Basilisk as it was to everyone else.

“Anyone?” Vere asked one of the soldiers escorting them.

The man looked down at the device in his hands, which offered a steady and unchanging beep.

“No signs of life anywhere,” the officer said.

At the royal gates, she thought about telling them to go on without her so she could continue walking, beyond the main wall and across the fields. The caves she had visited with Galen seemed to be calling to her. The Green Chapel. The place they had explored as children and the spot she had returned to when it came time to fulfill her part of the deal and have her head lopped off. Willing the urge away, she let the thought form in her head that she would return there only when the round table was settled and not earlier.

One of the things Vere had realized while pushing the Circle of Sorrow was that everyone had their own issues and their own way of dealing with them. In her younger years, her way of coping had been to run away from problems. Galen’s had been through introspection. Morgan’s way, both then and now, was through anger. Maybe she would use that anger for something positive. Maybe it would eat her up inside. All Vere could do was hope things worked out for her friend. That was another thing Mortimous had taught her during her time as a prisoner: people couldn’t change each other; they could only change themselves.

“Mowbray is going to pay for this,” a voice said behind her.

When she turned, she saw that Morgan had rejoined the group.

Traskk let out a reaffirming growl before slamming his tail against the ground. The pavement cracked underneath him. Morgan looked to Vere for the translation.

“He said Mowbray isn’t the only one who’s going to pay.”

They looked up at the king’s chambers, which was easy to spot with the Crown’s five-pronged cannon on top of it. They had found no signs of life so far, so she guessed that if Scrope were still on the planet, he would be somewhere in the tower above them.

Morgan cracked her knuckles. “You can’t even fathom how bad I’m going to hurt that bastard.”

As much as Vere knew Scrope deserved whatever was coming to him, part of her hoped he had the common sense to flee before they arrived. Maybe he had a personal transport and was already on his way back to Vonnegan territory and to Mowbray’s protection.

It wasn’t that she thought he should go unpunished. She knew how the galaxy worked; one way or another the politician-turned-traitor would get what was coming to him. The galaxy had a funny way of ensuring good things happened to good people and bad things happened to bad people. Somehow or some way, people always eventually got what they deserved. That realization made finding Scrope seem unimportant to Vere. It was another thing Mowbray had inadvertently taught her by sending her to the Cauldrons.

56

Looking out the windows of the king’s chamber, Scrope saw the group of CasterLan soldiers coming to get him. They were hundreds of stories below, much too far for him to identify or even count them, but he would have bet anything that Morgan and Traskk would be amongst them. When he forced himself to stop muttering out loud like a lunatic, he realized his time was coming to an end.

He didn’t mind if the CasterLan security forces came and put him in chains. What was the worst that would happen? They would put him in a jail cell for the rest of his life. They might offer him to Mowbray in exchange for one of his prisoners. Scrope didn’t mind spending however many years he had remaining of his pitiful existence in a CasterLan prison. Compared to the Cauldrons of Dagda, that outcome would be luxurious.

What he feared were Morgan and that giant reptile. He would never make it to a trial or a prison if either of them got their hands on him. He would never make it out of the room—at least not in one piece.

The thought made his knees buckle, made him retch.

It was the same queasiness that came over him each time he opened the windows in the king’s chamber and tried to convince himself to jump. So far to fall before he died! It was the same nausea he felt in his stomach when he picked up a blaster, pointed it at his head, and begged himself to be able to pull the trigger.

Each time he wasn’t able to do one of these things, he cursed himself for his weakness. He taunted himself with things like, “If you weren’t so pitiful you could avoid them coming to get you. You could avoid it all”. Other times, he whined, “You make me sick; you can betray an entire kingdom but you can’t just kill yourself?” Around the room he stormed, ridiculing himself, shouting although there was no one else around to hear him.

No amount of self-loathing could make him do it, however.

Disgusted with himself, he turned to self-pity. The people had hated him and reviled him so much that they had abandoned their homes and left the planet rather than be citizens under his rule. His entire career had been for nothing. Everyone despised him.

Now, it was going to be over. A group of CasterLan soldiers were on their way up to get him. Even if he activated the security panels and locked himself inside the chambers, it would only take them a short while to get inside. Hiding from them would only cause another brief delay. He didn’t have it in his resolve to kill himself. There was only one thing left to do, and so he settled on accomplishing his plan.

Quite simply, he would kill Morgan and Traskk before they could kill him.

He would never be able to wipe out the entire group of soldiers. Even the idea of somehow doing so made him laugh at his own ineptitude. He was a politician! He killed people by starting wars, not by fighting them. He had never looked someone in the eyes and ended their life.

If he could just kill those two people, however, he would then drop his blaster on the ground and turn himself over to be jailed. It wasn’t how he had envisioned his life turning out when he first began working in the Edsall Dark diplomatic corps, but it was the best of a bad set of options. And it would keep Morgan and Traskk from torturing him.

He heard a double beep, followed by a yellow dot of light flashing on the wall. The lift had reached the top floor. They had arrived.

Hiding behind the curtains that lined most of the room, he stood in darkness next to the doorway. If he were lucky, he could avoid being seen by the soldiers and get off two quick shots at Morgan and Traskk before surrendering.

Muffled voices could be heard on the other side of the door.

“What if it’s a trap?” he heard Vere ask someone else.

“I don’t care if it is,” Morgan’s voice replied from the other side of the door.

From behind the curtains, Scrope could only see a gray hazy image of the closed door. Then he heard the door open and saw movement as the group cautiously entered the room. As soon as the last person walked through, he would jump out and find his two targets.

His heart was thudding. Sweat trickled down his forehead and into his eyes.

I can do this
, he told himself.

It was the last thought he had before a leathery set of claws tore through the curtain and grabbed him by the throat. Before he could aim at anyone, let alone pull the trigger, Traskk’s other hand ripped the blaster away and tossed it across the room. The Basilisk roared and bared his fangs. Foul-smelling saliva sprayed across Scrope’s face. He didn’t realize it, though. He had already fainted.