Alliance ch 26: An Unfamiliar Roar

Betrayal had a unique stench. Heat prickled its sharp tang, glazing over a bitter undertone, and like clouds gathering for a storm, it huddled around Aalee Sirvette as she shrieked. She sat in a crook of thick branches two stories above Xlack’s head.

As soon as she had the group’s attention, she cried, “Somebody, please help! I’m stuck up here.”

Xlack folded his arms. “How did you get up there?”

“Oh, Ravi Ekymé!” She giggled. “I’m so glad it’s you who came to rescue me.”

“Not going to answer the question?”

“A monster threw me in this tree, but you’re my hero, Ravi Ekymé.” She smiled brighter, but it had a jagged edge. Fear eddied in her clouds of betrayal, cold and stinging.

It stood Xlack’s hair on end. This was not the annoyingly sweet little girl he remembered. She never had to convince herself that she was beyond excited to see him, always teasing that they were destined to be together though she knew it would never happen. Their mothers had promised Xlack’s future daughter to Ject’s future son, so the mother of that daughter could not be Ject’s sister.

The Aalee he knew was ten, trying to grow up too fast, full of baseless dreams, and afraid of nothing.

She swung her feet, harsh glare on Messenger Vinva as he climbed the tree. “I said Ravi Ekymé is my hero.” Her sandals rained, and the Messenger jumped away, dismissing her with a shrug of his eyebrows. He was much more interested in the fact that, as he fell, Twi had Kinetically stolen back her weapon.

Rifo raised a hand. “I vote we leave her in the tree.”

“Aren’t ya heartless!” Lanox slapped Rifo’s shoulder and approached the twisted trunk. “I’ll help ya, little girl, like any decent person should.”

As she climbed, the would-be rescuee scooted further along the branch. By the time Lanox reached her, Aalee had wiggled into a lunge poorly disguised as a fall. Xlack’s Kinetics pushed on her belt to slow and direct her away from himself.

One set of toes alighted on the ground, then the other, her voice wheezy. “Thank you. Oh, thank you!” The back of one hand pressed against her forehead, and the other rose, bent like the neck of some posing bird. Then she threw both arms around his middle. “Oh, Ravi Ekymé, I saw my too-short life flash before my eyes!”

“You’d have lived,” he muttered.

This was more like Aalee—overdramatic and always trying to cling on him. Yet, the clouds and eddies remained. Were they his fault? Aliara had not known of his treachery, but Ject did. Had he told his sister? Now she feared and resented him.

“Where is your escort, Lady Aalee?” Aliara questioned, datapad in hand.

Aalee moved just enough to glare at her from the corner of her eye. “Messengers are so annoying. They’re not allowed to be fathers, but they act like paranoid parents.”

“Give us his name so we can call him.”

She buried her face in the front of Xlack’s jacket and pretended to bawl. “Oh, I was so terrified!”

Aliara stepped closer and stage whispered, “You should erase her memory.”

Aalee’s sobs vanished, and her glower pounced on the other Sereh. “Why?”

“Because he doesn’t want others to know he’s here, and you cannot keep a secret.”

“I can too keep a secret.” Aalee stomped with the beat of her words.

Aliara waved the claim aside. “Forgive me, but you have a reputation for spilling everything.”

Aalee’s clouds darkened, thickened, and bittered enough that Xlack couldn’t hold back a grimace.

She threw her nose in the air. “I spill just enough to make them think I tell them everything.”

“How you inspire confidence in your trustworthiness.” Aliara’s smirk was like a sunrise—thin but hinting at the brilliance of her amusement.

“Release me, Lady Aalee,” Xlack said, and when she didn’t, he met her gaze and repeated it as a suggestion.

Her arms fell limp at her sides, but she kept her chin against his stomach. Hands on her shoulders, he pushed her back and knelt to her height. Faith wallowed in her eyes, but despite it, she flinched, and fear sparked. It pinched his heart.

“Why are you here, really?”

She ducked her head, eyes fluttering and lips squeezed together.

“I’ll use another suggestion if I have to.”

She gasped, shoulders rising, and she stilled, breath held for several moments. Fear swirled faster, but her pretenses cracked. Slowly, they crumbled and fell away.

Her eyes jumped back to his face. “Ravi K’alaqk wants you to come to him.”

“You’re helping him? Why?”

She gave the smallest of shrugs. “He’s different. And he’s the emperor, and you’re supposed to do what the emperor wants. It sounds like a trap, but he won’t hurt you. He promised, and he doesn’t want to hurt you. I can tell.”

Doubt wormed within Xlack. Sereh were not taught to use their Talents as Aylata did, but nor were they uneducated. Fire Sereh had to learn how not to burn themselves, others, or the furniture. Mind Sereh like Aalee were taught to discern the desires of those around them. Had his mother said she sensed that K’alaqk didn’t want to hurt him, he would have believed her, but Aalee was so young, and K’alaqk was very skilled in deception.

“He said what he wants with us?”

“Us?” She peered around him at his foreign teammates, eyes narrowing and the corner of her mouth dropping sharply. “Is she really your lady of interest?”

He glanced at Twi. The Messenger had returned their weapons and now interrogated her about her proficiency with Kinetics.

Xlack grinned. “Not officially, but she’s amazing.”

Aalee huffed. “K’alaqk wants her, too. He told Defender Spycykle to kill the others, but you’re here now. You can take me back to my dad.”

He could, and he should. She was a lost, defenseless child, and he wanted to speak to her father anyway. It didn’t matter if the blabbermouth told her family he was there if he told them himself. In the meantime, she could spill what secrets she had learned from K’alaqk.

He stood and patted her on the head. “Alright, we’ll take you home to Threnian Station.”

The older Sereh cleared her throat, arms crossed and beads chiming as she cocked her hips. “Do you expect High Defender Sirvette to also keep your presence a secret?”

He hesitated. High Defenders reported directly to Refraction Leaders. Aliara Yayin would have to go out of her way to tell his father she had seen him, but High Defender Sirvette would have to deliberately omit that information.

With a mirthless smile, she waved at his thoughts. Her beads sounded like shattering glass. “Nothing good awaits you there, but we must all make our own choices.” She produced a tiny, clear cube from her pocket. “I received this in a package this morning with instructions to pass it to you should I see you. I thought it was a posthumous testament sort of thing, but since you said Ravi Sirvette lives…”

A message from Ject. Xlack reached for it, but Rifo snatched it first.

“What is it?” He stepped between Xlack and Aliara, rolling the esoteric box in his palm.

Aalee gaped up at him. “You’re the tallest person I’ve ever seen. What do you even eat?”

“Little girls who ask the wrong questions, probably.” He smirked, and while the sight of his teeth wasn’t as intimidating as Stevalok’s, the disconcerting flare of his slit nostrils was enough to send Aalee ducking behind Xlack. “Is no one going to explain what this is?”

Xlack called the box to his hand, but as he opened his mouth, Twi spoke the words he meant to say.

“It holds a message intended for a specific audience.” Regardless of her limp, she moved with feline grace as she, too, planted herself between them, trusting Rifo at her back. “Except for its size, it’s identical to one Sirvette left for me at a murder scene on Cinos.”

The syllables slipped from her tongue with a deceptive weightlessness, and Xlack swallowed.

He had already warned her, Mystis said in the med-center. He promised her revenge, then he nearly succeeded in killing her.

“That message played as soon as I touched the box. If this one is intended for you, and you hold it, why does it remain silent?”

“Maybe I’m not the trigger.” He tried to shrug, to exude the same nonchalance, but he might as well have been made of stone. Ject lived, but Xlack had only seen him for the briefest of moments, and doubt’s thorny rope coiled around his deepest self. He wanted the box to open—he wanted to see his friend—yet he didn’t. He didn’t want to see his friend threaten someone he loved.

He didn’t move as Twi took the cube, bare fingertips against its smooth surface. Nothing happened. She wasn’t the trigger either. His eyes narrowed in their crooked squint.

Twi turned the box over and gently probed its sides. “An engraving.” She handed it back. “What’s it say?”

Xlack pressed a thumb over the spot she indicated and found a shallow string of Nayatilix characters. The stone within him crumbled away, leaving a hollow, hungry pit. “Last words.”

“A suicide note?” Lanox guessed.

With great effort, he shook his head and turned to her. “No, it’s a clue.”

“Because he told ya long ago what his last words would be?”

“That would be weird, Lanox.”

“Weird is a good word to describe all of this.”

“It’s a funeral tradition.” Aliara stepped around Rifo, her Messenger at her side, ready the instant she needed a shield. “One speaks or inscribes the last profound thing the deceased said to them.”

Aalee’s arms wrapped around Xlack again, this time from behind. “Whose last words are we looking for?”

“Twi.” Xlack held the cube out to her, and she frowned. “What was the last thing you said to him?”

Aalee huffed, hands on hips. “She’s clearly not dead.”

“This is Ject’s way of saying she will be. Twi?”

She drew a shaky breath. “I intended to ask what he wanted, but I’m not sure I actually said anything. I wasn’t very lucid by the time he showed up.”

The pit within Xlack deepened, oozing a chill that dripped down his limbs. “Before we left Napix, then. Before I found you in the tunnels beneath the research facility. It doesn’t have to be the last thing you said, just words that would have stuck with him. Words he would remember you by.”

Twi looked away, and a hand rose to her brow as if to keep it from throbbing. Her eyes closed, lashes a dark fan against her pale cheeks—the shades of night and moonlight graced her despite the afternoon sun filtering through the orchard’s brittle foliage.

Her whisper wafted like a lullaby. “I told him my secrets are my own.”

The box lit up.

Xlack’s breath caught as Ject appeared. His hair was longer than he usually kept it, and exhaustion lent a puffiness to the bold lines that normally drew him, but he lived, and moved, and spoke.

“Secrets when guarded offer protection, for yourself and others. I understand that.”

Dust swirled in a soft breeze, pelting Xlack’s cheeks. It glittered as it passed through the image—proof that it was merely a hologram. He knew it was, but some part of him still wanted to grab his friend’s shoulders and shake sense into him.

“I cannot fault you for looking out for your own first. In fact, I’d find it odd if you didn’t. But you don’t need Xlack Ekymé, not like the Napix Empire does. So, just this once, I offer a trade: Come to the capitol building in the center of Kaitaetha District and bring him with you. Undo your brainwashing, and I will return all those taken from the Alliance. End.”

The hologram faded, but a negative of the image remained branded on Xlack’s eyes, still moving, still talking, asking the things Ject should have. There was no brainwashing to undo, and he didn’t need ransomed. If Ject had custody of those abducted, he should return them because they didn’t belong here.

By that merit, Xlack didn’t belong with the Adjuvants, and Ject would use that counterargument.

Aalee reached toward the phantom image. “Ravi K’alaqk spoke as if my brother was alive, but I thought he was just being philosophical.”

Xlack closed his fist around the cube, searching for what to say to her. She had believed Ject dead, and this wasn’t a great way to find out otherwise. But if her brother hadn’t told her of Xlack’s renegade status, who had? How had she ended up helping K’alaqk?

Twi’s voice, soft but determined, broke his reverie. “We’re going to this capitol he mentioned.”

“What? No!”

“I feel similarly,” Rifo said, an arm held in front of Xlack, “but Twi doesn’t do things without reason.” He settled a heavy look on her.

She acknowledged it with a nod. “We came here to recover our people and prevent future attacks, and that is precisely what he is offering. He wants to help you, Ekymé. You just have to tell him how.”

“Then I’ll meet him alone.”

“While we do what?”

He didn’t have another proposition, and she was right. They shouldn’t split up.

“We didn’t come here to prove our cowardice.” Touching her ear, she activated one of the two syses he had converted to work with the local networks. Rifo wore the other. “Let’s plot a route.”

Xlack still hesitated. “I want to hear what the High Defender has to say first, and that way, we don’t get Lady Aalee involved in whatever happens at Kaitaetha.”

“I can return Aalee to her father,” Aliara said, hands on the younger girl’s shoulders, “or keep her safe here.”

Aalee’s lips twisted in a sideways pucker, her pale brows nearly hiding in her eyelashes.

Twi sighed, silver eyes on him like chains. Like a harpoon. “Is meeting with this High Defender really any safer?”

For her, maybe. High Defender Sirvette hadn’t said he would kill her. The man was a follower, though, and fond of detailed rules. His reaction would depend on what Xlack’s father had already expressed on the matter.

Xlack had come to Aliara first to test out what they thought of him now—if there was any part of his reputation still salvageable. Apparently, there was. With it, he could ask for the High Defender’s support. He could request memory flashes of current affairs, and from there decide if he would go to his father, if he could rely on the strength of the Refraction Leaders.

Ject, on the other hand, seemed to be on the other side of the brewing civil war.

Aalee tore free and dashed toward the hills at the back of the orchard. “If we’re going to Kaitaetha, we have to take the tunnel train!”

The route was logical. Imura District’s islands connected to Zalerit’s smallest continent through natural tunnels that ran deep beneath the ocean. Several of them had speedy trains. But even if they were going, Aalee wasn’t going with them.

“Wait!” Xlack called, but she paid no heed.

They didn’t chase her. She would come back when she realized they wouldn’t follow.

But she didn’t. She faded into the deep shadows between the hills at the back of the orchard, and when she ducked into a small cave, even her life-signature vanished.

Xlack lurched forward, her name on his lips. Aalee was fond of jokes. That was all this was. Any moment now, she would jump out and laugh.

Seconds ticked by, and he stood in front of the rocky crack in the hillside. Even his sharp eyes picked up nothing but darkness within. His Kinetics concurred. Nothing waited beyond the entrance, not even dirt or warmth.

“It’s too odd,” Twi said, an arm barring his path.

He ducked beneath it and through the fissure. His senses had not lied. There was nothing, not even ground to stand on. He caught the ledge, but it crumbled between his fingers.

Twi’s hands wrapped his, delaying his fall, but with the connection, whatever had caused his touch to destroy the land traveled through her. The path beneath her turned to powder and poured into the void. He willed it to solidify, to form handholds, anything that could stop their plunge, but his influence was a whisper amid an unfamiliar roar.

***

Zalerit, the home of Sažka’s ancestors—the ones she looked like, anyway—was at once alien and familiar. She had never met someone so purely Zalerit that their hair grew in split rachis like feathers. Nor had she known anyone whose secondary eyes, while still smaller, were near in size to their first set and not practically blind. She had never seen a glow so bright.

These things were normal here, and she was still the foreigner.

Ject Sirvette wanted to avoid questions, so instead of staying in a city, they sheltered in a cave. Steaming, reedy pools dotted the floor, and water dripped from the ceiling. In here, one could forget the fat, fluffy snowflakes outside. Ateki slept soundly, curled next to one of the springs, but Sažka kept her eyes on the Aylata.

He stood in the mouth of the cave, the threshold of warm and cold, stare bouncing between his silent datapad and the city glistening in the valley below. He could have tracked down his friend, but he wanted Ekymé and the Adjuvants to come to him instead, on his chosen battleground. Sirvette had sent a message and expressed confidence they would come.

Sažka hoped they wouldn’t. In the meantime, she had to escape. Then she would have to avoid Kaitaetha’s Protector, a former classmate of her captor’s. Protector Fali Zundi was under suggestion to report to Sirvette, not that he knew it. He supposedly didn’t even remember he had met with them. She couldn’t shake the sight of the Protector’s glazed eyes as the suggestion took, of the too smooth way he had moved, how he had looked right through her when she wasn’t even invisible, all because Sirvette said she didn’t exist.

Ject Sirvette’s prowess was terrifying. If all Aylata were like him, she understood how Zalerit lost so long ago.

And here I am, an idiot he mistakes for a teammate.

She sat on a bumpy rock, trying to keep awake, though at least a full day had passed since she slept. With every blink, the insides of her eyelids displayed Teree’s betrayed look.

I’m telling, he had called.

What had he told their superiors? Would they believe she had truly betrayed them? Would Izeko? Would he do something stupid?

“Why?” Sirvette’s low voice slipped between her heartbeats, almost lost to the winter wind rushing past the entrance. “Why would she keep him?”

“Are you asking me?” Sažka looked up. His back was to her, as it had been for some time. Perhaps she could rush him from behind and…

Then what?

“It makes sense Twi would use Xlack to get away from here, but why keep him in Alliance Space? She might view him as a prize, but it’s stupid. She must realize we won’t let you have him.”

“Aylata don’t belong in Alliance Space.” She scowled. “Just like Aylata don’t belong on Zalerit.”

Sirvette turned toward her with the leanest of grins. “Aylata have been on Zalerit for a long time.”

She stood, fists clenched. “Centuries later, will you say the same of Alliance Space?”

“I see.” His lightless eyes slimmed. “You think Xlack is there as a forerunner, a spy, and that Aylata plan to take Alliance worlds like we did with Zalerit.”

“It fits. Why else would you hunt down those with the best chance of fighting back?”

“Because you stole the First Ravi.” He clipped the last syllable as if he debated finishing that sentence. As if there was something else he decided not to say.

Like an insect attracted to the light, she stepped toward him. “You don’t believe that’s the reason.”

The muscles along his jaw worked, and he drew a deep breath. “You think Xlack’s mission was to save Twi to gain her confidence and infiltrate her home?”

Though the question had a combative edge, it sounded genuine, as if Sirvette considered this a possibility. Denying herself another step forward, Sažka returned to her uncomfortable boulder. Ekymé was a spy, but he couldn’t have saved Twi merely as part of a ruse. He cared for her. He couldn’t have faked that for so long around so many Talented Tala.

Could it be like when Mystis played with her pawns? Ekymé could have been a piece in someone else’s plan and not even realized it.

“He helped Twi because he wanted to.” She weighed empty air in either hand. “He also takes advantage of the position he is in. How else would your troopers know exactly where to strike?”

Sirvette batted the notion down, shoulders against the uneven wall. “Defender Spycykle’s intel. He’s good at trudging up stuff like that. Besides, if Xlack was in on it, would he have let them get near Twi?”

She supposed not.

Spine sliding along the wall, he sat and produced a pair of rounded triangular cases from a pocket. He pulled the lid off one, releasing the scent of edibles, and Sažka’s stomach growled. She crossed her arms over her torso and glared at it. Even if he were to offer to share, she wouldn’t take any of the pinky-toe-sized meal gummies.

That’s what they are, she convinced herself, disgusting toes.

Her empty stomach didn’t believe her.

Seeking distraction, she spoke over its complaints. “Your Talent comes so easy to you, you can’t imagine what it’s like not to be able to work someone’s mind like a puppet master, but Twi is unskilled with her Mind Talents. She’s not capable of doing what you say she has.”

“You want me to believe Xlack willingly threw everything away for a stranger.” He faced the cave entrance, voice distorted by the slowly dissolving gummy bulging his cheek.

“What if he did?”

“I have to bring him back.” He sat so stiff. He could have been a tree watching the landscape shift, roots desperately holding his own patch of ground to an ancient standard. “I’ll return him, even if he hates me for it.”

Sažka looked away. Among the batch of weeds growing along the edge of the nearest pond lurked a short, soft-cased reed known to cause disorientation and lethargy. If only she could get this Aylata to eat it.

Sirvette popped another gummy into his mouth, and she imagined shoving the reed in with it, throwing all subterfuge aside and relying on brute strength.

Well, that’s not going to work.

He couldn’t expect her to be his ally, but this would be easier if he believed he was winning her over. She just had to make him feel that she understood and shared his goals.

“I get it.” She wrung the leafy reed between her fingers. “I would do the same for Izeko.”

Sirvette looked back at her, eyes wide at first, then narrowed. His mouth was an unchanging, thin line. “Don’t play with that plant. It’s a hallucinogen.”

She let the reed drop. Of course he recognized it.

She slouched, slid off the rock, and leaned her back against it. Steam curled above her face, the heat of the pond enticing. Maybe a tunnel hid in its depths, some swimmable passage that led out of this cave. She could dive into the pool.

And drown looking for something that only might exist.

Why did she dream up only the most ridiculous escape plans? The right way out of this loomed just beyond her fingertips. If only she could reach a little further, but the more she thought about it, the more the word ‘impossible’ scribbled itself across her mind.

Continued in chapter 27

Thank you for reading!