Marya swallowed. The name had brought her suddenly back to herself, half standing over her hasty pile of belongings, the door a slim defense against Malcav’s eventual return.
“Malcav.” The name even tasted ugly.
“He has been directing this, under the king’s…orders…”
A memory tugged away the rest of her sentence: “You spoke out against the king and his advisors! No punishment is bad enough for you…”
The king and his advisors. Every suspicion she’d had, and every cautious suggestion Okner and the others had made, came flooding back.
The king was vain, cruel, selfish, yes, but she’d allowed that to blind her to the power Malcav had not only held but wielded, skillfully and gainfully and in large part through her. Her original protests had been against the advisors as a group, and she hadn’t hesitated then to call them voracious, power-stealers, leeches, even demi-kings. But it had been Malcav at the front all the time, or rather at the back – carrying orders ‘from the king’ that furthered the greediest plans and simultaneously undermined royal support.
Poor Friya’s death hadn’t been final proof of the king’s insanity, then, but a glaring error on Malcav’s part, a window into the truth that he’d smeared with her friend’s suffering! Blood and screams and death…
Cay Vojen leaned cautiously closer to the orb.
“Um, are you ok? Why are you crying?”
It was a deep, almost silent kind of sobbing; she seemed to have forgotten them entirely.
The university student, who had been as quiet as the other passengers until then, spoke up gently:
“I am studying politics; I know something about advisor Malcav. He gained a large following in Calcor’Bolad, where he grew up after his parents were banished. It’s not really clear how he managed to become one the king’s advisors, but he rose through the ranks surprisingly quickly and is one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. Some people, confidentially-”
The young man glanced around nervously before continuing,
“Some people have called him the mind behind the throne, although the king has shown himself to have some definitive opinions from the beginning of his reign, so most do not think Malcav is controlling a puppet king. But he certainly has a strong political influence.”
“And?”
Cay glanced at Zinn, surprised, but it was the cartographer who’d spoken.
“What part do you think he has played in all this?”
The student hesitated.
“Well, ma’am, everyone knows the king’s groups have been happening for a long time, in various forms, dating back to when it was a ritual for initiation as a citizen, I think. And the current king has used them to emphasize loyalty to the country, with the severe consequences of, er, failing to attend. But, I think, er…there haven’t been many deaths before, or not since this system was set up.”
He looked at the lady for confirmation; she nodded.
“And, er, opening the Doar Blockade doesn’t really align with the king’s past political actions. The national embargo hasn’t been lifted for anything since Calcor’Bolad resurrected slave trade.”
He paused again.
“I don’t know how the Skye gangs are connected to Calcor’Bolad, if they are; I remember hearing that the tunnels network used to be used for trade but only within our own country. So…”
The student frowned, trying to collect his thoughts, and the older gentleman interrupted:
“I know, believe me, a military assignment when I see one. Not every assignment uses soldiers or even anyone connected with the army,” he added, seeing Zinnia’s expression, then continued, “The mission is perfectly set up. A group with extraordinary potential, but with no consequences for its failure. By slowly eliminating each member of the group, these children would be motivated to succeed in the tasks and all evidence of the endeavor would be wiped out entirely and explained away as accidents resulting from failure or misunderstandings.”
“An apple and a stick,” mused the lady cartographer. “Both at once.”
Zinnia Questel cut herself off before she could fit together the stark description with her actual experience. Something else wasn’t going on, that should have been. The woman had been crying all that while as though she’d forgotten their existence. But now Zinnia heard an active silence from the hovering orb. What was her name again?
“Marya?”
The boys and the other passengers fell silent, and they could all hear her breathing carefully.
“He’s coming.”
She took another slow breath.
“And he has my sister.”
Zinnia felt a wave of panic, first on Marya’s behalf, and then in the aftermath for herself.
The cartographer leaned forward and placed her hand on Zinnia’s knee.
“It is clear…”
She paused for them all to lean in to hear her murmur.
“Whatever this man’s plan was, he wants you all dead. You all know that. The king will not save you. I can’t save you. You must all run. Run and hide, and I at least will do what I can here in the capital. Your lives may very well determine his success or defeat, which in turn could even mean laws for slavery or freedom in this country.”
She stopped; the older gentleman and the student had both reacted slightly in perturbed understanding, while the three teenagers were frozen, hunched, not knowing what to do.
In the heavy silence, the door opening next to Marya sounded loud.
Joran Arundasi’s whole body was tense, his teeth clenched, on the edge of his seat with one foot flat and the other bent, as though ready to run. But to where?
The silence in the coach pressed him down with a heavy hand.
Malcav’s voice felt so close, closer than when he’d first called them up onto the stage and formed them into their ill-fated group.
“…forgotten so soon?” he was saying, and the pure evil in his tone sickened Joran to his core.
“I haven’t forgotten,” Marya was saying, but she sounded unfocused even past the intensity of her words, as though her gaze and heart were elsewhere.
“I haven’t forgotten anything I said, especially now that I know it is all true. You have been-”
“DO YOU forget!” His anger was so quickly controlled, or least his voice. He’d had them all under his control, and still did – their deaths at his fingertips, a flick of a switch away.
“I have the power here, woman. You will pay for your lies and rebellion…”
Joran closed his eyes. In his mind he saw his father, sitting almost proudly at his desk, holding up a silver-rimmed controller for Joran’s unwilling inspection. Jor had ripped his gaze from it, staring through welling tears at the twisted wiring that wound around and under the desk to mysterious connections.
“I wanted to rip it out,” he breathed. The others shifted noiselessly to stare at him. His father had explained it to him in painful detail. “The navigational systems. They are needed to orient the Device in the air…”
Malcav was still talking to Marya – shouting at her over a stumbling crash that must not have been Marya; they could still hear her uneven breathing.
“It can’t track movement without them, or fully cloak itself, or ignite flames…” Why had his father thought he’d want to know? His father’s obsession fit perfectly into the blankness he wanted to spread over his memories: when the Device had materialized out of nothing, how it had moved and tracked them, and why his mother had disappeared. His father wanted to understand, but Jor only wanted to run away.
“All those wires, strung with drops of blood…”
They just stared at him, and the cartographer gently motioned with her hand for him to hush, but that was how Jor had seen the little red connectors that his father produced, painstakingly tying the black strands in bitter patterns.
He’d just wanted it all to stop.