Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2) (24 page)

“How so?”

“I’m disappointed that the Mouth is a farce. It saddens me to
think there’s nothing more. Nothing… after.”

“There is. It’s only that what comes after isn’t for us to
enjoy.”

“Then who’s it for?”

“We don’t know. All we know is what the fates have revealed
to us. And according to the fates, the True World involves a total erasure of
everything that’s come before it. That includes us. So, to answer your
question… we’re keeping this secret because there are those who don’t believe
this False World is worth preserving. Those who are either in denial about the
part we’ll play in the next world, or who hate living in this one. Who hate it
so much they wish to end it for us all. A mass suicide, performed by the few on
behalf of the many.”

“So… we have to believe what the fates tell us. And we must
keep them a secret, or we all die.”

“That, Sister Bastille, is the exact essence of what you, as
a member of the Esteemed Order, are purposed to do.”

And what if I want the False World to end?
Bastille
thought, but dare not say.

CHAPTER 19

A Revenge Sewn

Nichel Vantanible hurled a glass of cognac at the wall,
where it shattered in a spray of amber liquid. Droplets fell from a yellow
stain on the wallpaper. “Why does this keep happening to me? These nomads have
got to be stopped.”

Toler Glaive gulped, felt his face grow hot. He knew why this
was happening. He just didn’t know how.

“I change the routes, and they strike with the same
frequency,” Vantanible continued. “I change them again, and still they strike.
I purge my company of possible spies and let dozens of good workers flee into
exile; I increase the guard, I require my merchants to hire extra shepherds—and
still the nomads decimate my trains and savage the scraps like wolves to a
carcass. My own daughter has fallen victim to the nomads’ terrors. How can this
be happening? What am I doing wrong? Is someone reading my mind? Do those
filthy nomads have some sorcerer or witch who can discern my thoughts? It’s as
if they know my every step before I take it.”

Toler squirmed in his seat. He was the guilty party here; not
some sorcerer or mind reader. His carelessness had resulted in at least three
of his route maps falling into Daxin’s hands—and thereafter, into the hands of
the nomads. Those were just the ones he knew about.

This last map, though, he’d retrieved from his brother; it
was sitting on the table in front of him now. Blatcher had even checked Daxin’s
bags for copies the day they caught him in the scrubs. Either Daxin had hidden
a copy somewhere Blatcher hadn’t checked, or he and his nomad buddies had found
some other way to foresee Vantanible’s plans.

Toler knew he couldn’t admit his guilt. No matter how much
the guilt ate away at him, he could never say a word. Nor would he make the
same mistake again. Sitting at the long conference table while Vantanible
threatened to burst a blood vessel and tear the room to shreds, Toler swore a
silent vow to himself. He’d find his brother again, wherever he might be. And
this time, he’d make sure he killed him. “We need to change the routes again,”
Toler said. “As many times as it takes.”

Nichel Vantanible shot him a look. “How many possible routes
do you think there are? How many different detours can we take across the Inner
East before the routes become too inefficient to justify? We’ve got seven major
cities, dozens of towns, and who knows how many hundreds of villages and
hamlets to supply. We don’t even trade with Celios or Nebulai anymore. Stubborn
bastards. I’ve run out of ideas, Toler. Changing the routes is a given. We need
something more. Something different. Anyone else have any bright ideas?”

Nichel’s business associates bobbed in their leather chairs,
tapped their pens, sipped their water, and looked around at one another. The
only thing it seemed they weren’t prepared to do was speak.

“Not a thing. Not a coffing thing from any of you. What in
Infernal’s name do I pay you for? You’re fully aware of the kind of financial
hits we’ve been taking lately. It’s one thing for the savages to harass us from
time to time. Kill a few shepherds. Maybe make off with a few stolen goods. But
these are entire caravans they’re walking away with. Dozens of crates, hundreds
of horses… whole shipments gone missing. Just… disappearing in a puff of smoke.
Who’s going to answer for that? Huh? Who’s going to pay those merchants to stay
in business? Who’s going to go out there and convince them they should keep
trading across the wasteland when they can sit here in their comfortable
warehouses and let the customers come to them? It’s going to take more than a
few dways with javelins, I’ll tell you that much. This is unsustainable. We’re
going to end up leaving a whole lot of people in the lurch if something doesn’t
give pretty quick.”

“The nomads are just defending their homeland. You can’t
blame them for that,” said Bilner Nichols, the plump, balding man in charge of
Vantanible’s personnel department.

“They’ve gone far beyond defending it, you imbecile. This
borders on genocide.”

“Why don’t we send an envoy to Sai Calgoar to initiate peace
talks with Tycho Montari?” suggested Hayley Abbott, Nichel’s head of public
relations, as she swept a tuft of medium brown hair from her eyes.

“The last envoy we sent to Sai Calgoar was twenty strong,”
said Nichel. “One man came back. They let him bring us the box of toes they cut
off the others before pressing them into slavery. The nomads don’t want peace.
They want every one of us dead or enslaved. As long as they have the upper
hand, why would they accept a truce?”

Hayley shrugged, fidgeting with the faded buttons on the cuff
of her sleeve.

“The men need to be better armed,” said Jaimber Rollins, the
rider who’d returned that morning with news of his caravan’s destruction.
“That’s the only thing that’ll keep the nomads at bay. We need plenty of guns,
and plenty of ammo.”

“Are you going to pay for that?” asked Nichel. “Are you going
to train them? Teach them how to shoot? Javelins have been our shepherds’
weapon of choice for years. Fighting from horseback, there’s nothing better
than a good spear. You said the nomads surprised you… came out of nowhere. Got
right in the middle of things. That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

Jaimber nodded. He was dusty from his ride home, his face
battered and bruised, his skin lightburned from overexposure. A patch of his
long brown hair was missing, as if someone had ripped it out in a handful. It
was clear the man had been through an ordeal before his escape, but although
he’d given Vantanible a detailed report on the attack itself, he’d kept silent
when asked what the nomads had done to him.

“That’s how they’re winning,” Nichel was saying. “Not because
they’ve got better weaponry, but because they’re cunning. Because they’re
aggressive. And because they have the numbers and the tactics to confuse and
disarm us. A bunch of handguns going off in every direction while the nomads
are in your face isn’t going to solve the problem. You’re going to kill as many
of each other as you do of them.”

“Right,” Jaimber said, pretending to agree.

Nichel stooped over to lean on the table with both hands, his
shoulders heavy with the weight of his stress. His eyes flicked up, scanning
the room with sharp scrutiny. “Nobody has anything else to say? No more
suggestions? Alright. Get out of here. All of you. If I don’t start hearing
some ideas—good ideas—” he shot Toler another look “—by tomorrow morning, it’s
going to be time for a few personnel changes around here.”

The men and women around the table stood and began to file
out, but Nichel caught Toler by the arm and pulled him aside before he could
leave. “Don’t think I’m not watching you, Toler. I’ve been hearing things about
you lately. Things I don’t want to believe.”

Toler kept his expression relaxed, though his heart was
pounding like a drum. “I don’t know what you could’ve heard, unless it’s that
I’m a Glaive. I’ll always be guilty of that.”

“Just watch your step. I’ve welcomed you into this
enterprise, and I’m preparing to welcome you into my family. But so help me, I
will end you if you give me a reason.”

“I’m heading over to spend the afternoon with Lenn. When
should I tell her to expect you home?”

“It’ll be a late one tonight,” said Nichel. “I’ve got a lot
of thinking to do.”

Toler glanced at the half-empty cognac decanter on Nichel’s
desk, and the new glass he’d already filled.
Is that what they call it?
“I’ll tell her not wait up.” Toler wrenched himself free of Nichel’s grip,
straightened his leathers, and left the room.

He walked the streets of Unterberg, worry tugging at the
edges of his calm. The smuggling ring he’d been operating over the past two
years had never aroused Nichel’s suspicions before. Using Vantanible’s caravans
as his vehicle, Toler had moved illicit goods through every city from Lottimer
to Beywarden—everything from counterfeit gold to zoom to pre-Heat ammunition.
Although he’d sworn to give it up a dozen times, each new success had changed
his mind.

Vantanible’s home was a sprawling, extravagant flat occupying
the entire third story of the Guaranelle Building. Toler never used the main
entrance, which sat level with the first floor on Pinkard Avenue. Instead he
ascended the wide exterior staircase carved into the mountainside, which
wrapped around the rear of the building and joined it to the in-ground parking
garage behind. Clay Nomad assassins had used this staircase the night they
broke into the flat and tried to kill Reylenn. That was back when Vantanible’s
security team had consisted of a graying man with a lantern in one hand and a
six-shooter in the other.

“How was the meeting?” Reylenn asked as Toler entered the
apartment and tossed his jacket over an armchair in the foyer.

Toler sighed. “Your dad’s pissed. He’s livid. Like, beside
himself.”

Reylenn gave him a soft, understanding look. “He gets like
that. For a man in charge of an empire, he doesn’t handle stress very well.
Come here, sweetheart.”

“Don’t I know it?” Toler crossed the marble floor to her
chair by the window, where she sat overlooking the streets of the Black City.
He kissed her forehead and sat on the brown leather ottoman beside her.

She wore one of the special button-down gowns her father had
commissioned from the Calistari seamstresses. Her right leg was bound in a cast
of heavy white plaster from ankle to thigh, propped on her wheelchair’s leg
rest. The smaller cast on her left leg ended below her knee.

Daxin’s plan to have Reylenn killed may have failed, but he
had certainly reduced the likelihood of her bearing Toler’s children anytime
soon. The nomads had managed to stab her twice before she jumped out her bedroom
window to escape them, landing hard enough to fracture two vertebrae and break
both her legs. Toler hadn’t told her about Merrick Bouchard, and he likely
never would. Knowing he’d let the healer slip through his fingers was bad
enough. Telling Reylenn there was a man out there who could repair the damage
to her body, and that Toler had failed to bring him home, would crush her.

Tossing unwashed waves of cream-colored hair aside, Reylenn
took Toler’s hand and gave it a squeeze, then favored him with a sympathetic
smile. “I’m sorry if he’s been irritable lately. He has a lot going on right
now.”

He isn’t the only one who’s got a lot going on
, Toler
wanted to say. He squeezed her hand back. “It’s alright. I just wish there were
something more I could do to help him. These nomads are ruining everything.”
The recent attacks had been cause for concern when it came to Toler’s illicit
business activities. But that wasn’t something he could talk about with her. He
would be back on the trail as soon as Reylenn could walk again; he’d concern
himself with smuggling and Salt Nomads when the time came.

“Dad has adapted before. He always figures out how to get
around these kinds of problems. I know you want to help him, but you don’t need
to. Unless you
want
to go out there and leave me again…”

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here until you’re
better.”

“You won’t go, but you want to. Admit it. It’s okay. I see
the way you stare out over the wastes. You love being out there.”

“I love being with you.”

“Toler, I know the way love looks in a man’s eyes. I see it
when you look at me… and I see it when you look out there. You love the danger
of it. The travel. The adventure. It’s one of the things that attracted me to
you when we first met. But at the same time, it scares me.”

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here with you,”
Toler said. “You know that.”

“You
like
sitting here twiddling your thumbs? I don’t.
I hate it. We haven’t even been able to have sex since you’ve been home. Now
that I’m like this, why would anyone want to stay?”

“Because I love you.”

“Because you’re scared of what my father would do if you
left.”

“Stop it. You know that isn’t true. Kiss me.”

When Toler leaned in, Reylenn turned away stiffly. “Promise
me you won’t leave again.”

“Don’t be cruel.”

“I’m not being cruel. I’m trying to show you how much I love
you. How much I need you. If you ever left me, I don’t know what I’d do.
I’d—I’d jump again.”

“No you wouldn’t. Please don’t say things like that.”

“I worry about you too much. I miss you every second you’re
gone, even when you’re here in town. I can’t stand the thought of losing you.”

“You’re not going to lose me.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise. I’m going to marry you, Lenn.”

When she turned back, she was beaming from ear to ear. She
pulled him close and kissed him, long and deep. “I just want to know I’ll be
your one and only, always and always. That you’ll be here with me forever.”

“I will,” he promised, though in his heart he knew it was a
lie. The wide world had already begun calling to him again, and it would only
be a matter of time before he answered. He only wished Reylenn had the same
desires he did; that she would one day ride with him to the Aionach’s distant
shores, the way his parents had ridden together before he was born. Perhaps in
time she would warm to the idea. When she was better, and she could walk and
ride again. For now Toler would content himself to be with the woman he loved.
That would have to be enough.

Toler prepared a late lunch, and they spent the afternoon
talking and playing games and discussing plans for the future. When the
light-star was low in the sky and the heat had gone down, he took her outside
and pushed her through the streets, past markets and shops and taverns where
savory cooking smells and sounds of merriment assailed them on the breeze. They
even ventured into the trade caves, where they found a quiet spot to sit beside
the river and watch the rafts and barges drift along the currents from town to
town.