The Revenants Read online

  “Any of what?” Tanik asked.

  “Giving weapons to kids, teaching them how to kill.” Darius shook his head. “You said I’m the key to everything, right?”

  Tanik’s eyes narrowed to thoughtful slits. “Yes...”

  “So if you want my help to hunt down and kill the Augur, then you have to leave my daughter out of it. No more swords, or guns. She can go off and be a regular twelve-year-old with other kids her age.”

  “No,” Cassandra said.

  Darius rounded on her. “I’m still your father, Cass. So what I say goes.”

  “Or what?”

  Darius blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “What are you going to do? Kick me out? Ground me and send me to my room?” Cassandra shook her head. “This isn’t your house.”

  Darius’s whole head felt hot. Veins in his temples were pulsing like they were about to explode. “When did you become such a brat?” he asked quietly.

  Cassandra’s lips quirked into a bitter smile. She turned and walked away, heading for the exit.

  “Hey! You come back here, right now! We don’t know if it’s safe out there!”

  But Cassandra only walked faster.

  Darius took a few hasty steps to follow, but Dyara stepped in front of him, shaking her head. “I’ll go after her. You can come find us later. Let her cool off first.”

  Darius accepted that with a stiff nod and watched as Dyara ran after Cassandra.

  “She’s right,” Tanik said quietly.

  Darius rounded on Tanik with a scowl. “Who’s right about what?”

  “Your daughter. She has a right to make her own decision about training.”

  “She’s twelve!”

  “In your time I assume that means she’s too young to go to war, but in this time, children of her age with her potential have no choice.”

  “You send twelve-year-olds into combat?”

  “No,” Tanik shook his head. “We send fourteen and fifteen-year-olds. It takes two years to train them.”

  Darius snorted. “I’m not going to change my mind. If she trains, I won’t, so it’s up to you.”

  “Is this because of your vision?” Tanik asked.

  “What vision?” Darius’s eyes narrowed swiftly, and he became peripherally aware of the other Acolytes gathering around.

  “The one where you claim to have foreseen my death. Except that it wasn’t me you saw in that casket. It was Cassandra.”

  Darius fixed Tanik with a wary look. “How would you know what I saw? Are you reading my mind?”

  Tanik shook his head. “I cannot. Revenants are immune to each other, remember?”

  “So how did I get thrown across the room a few minutes ago?”

  “That’s different. We’re only immune to each other’s minds.”

  “Then how would you know who I saw?”

  “It was clear from the way you acted. You wouldn’t be so concerned if you had foreseen my death.” Tanik gave him a twisted smile. “I doubt you would have even mentioned it if you had. It’s okay. We don’t have to be friends.”

  “We aren’t. What does my vision have to do with Cassandra’s training?”

  “You said that she died trying to negotiate with the Cygnians. Does that sound like something that could be a consequence of training her to fight? It may very well be that she dies in the future you saw because you denied her the training that would have saved her life.”

  Darius considered that with a heavy frown.

  “Does owning a gun make you a soldier?” Tanik pressed.

  “No.”

  “Then neither will a sword. There is no inherent danger in her training. It’s what she decides to do with it that you should concern yourself with.”

  Darius wasn’t sure he agreed with that analysis, but Tanik had raised a good point about his vision. When and if the Augur was defeated, the galaxy was going to erupt in a bloody civil war, and Cassandra would be better off if she knew how to defend herself when that time came.

  “I’m going to go find her,” he said.

  “Of course,” Tanik replied.

  “We’ll be on the upper levels,” Samara added. “That’s where the sleeping quarters are.”

  Darius nodded and took off at a run. He had the presence of mind to grab his flashlight on his way out. After ten minutes of searching the levels on different landings of the stairwell, he gave up and went back up to the entrance hall of the castle.

  But she wasn’t there either. On a whim he went outside and spotted Cassandra with Dyara, the two of them sitting on the edge of the only empty landing pad. Seeing Cassandra’s feet dangling over the edge of a thousand-foot drop with the wind gusting as it was made him wince. An image of Cassandra falling, her limbs flailing all the way down flashed through his mind.

  Darius shook his head to rid himself of the unsettling thought. He stopped a few feet behind Dyara and Cassandra and softly cleared his throat, afraid to scare them.

  Cassandra turned to see him standing there, and quickly looked away. Dyara glanced over her shoulder next. She smiled and waved him over.

  Darius sat down beside Cassandra, doing his best to ignore the dizzy thrill that coursed through him at the sight of the distant tree tops.

  Darius looked away from the view and nodded to Cassandra. She did her best to avoid his gaze. “Listen, Cass,” Darius began. “We fought your cancer together, so you should know why I treat you like you’re made of glass. For the past few years all I could think about was keeping you alive.”

  “But I’m cured now,” Cassandra said.

  “It’s only been a week since you were cured. My brain is still trying to catch up, and now there are other threats to deal with, and in some ways they’re a lot worse. I thought I’d lost you on Hades, Cass.”

  “I know,” Cassandra said, staring at her feet. “I’m sorry.”

  “For?”

  “I shouldn’t have spoken to you the way I did.”

  Darius smiled. “Thank you. I appreciate that, and I’m sorry too. I’ll try to be less protective, but I also need you to be careful and not put yourself in harm’s way.”

  “Just because I’m training to fight doesn’t mean that I have to fight,” Cassandra pointed out.

  “That’s what Tanik said,” Darius replied, nodding. “He thinks it would be safer for you if you knew how to defend yourself. And he’s right, so I’m going to let you train. But not with Samara.”

  Cassandra looked up. “Why not?”

  “I’ll get to that in a minute. First, you remember that vision I had when Tanik gave me the water with the sprites in it?”

  Cassandra nodded. “You said you saw Tanik, dead in a casket.”

  Darius shook his head. “I saw you in that casket, Cass. Tanik and I were at your funeral. I lied because I didn’t want to scare you.”

  Cassandra’s brow wrinkled.

  “It was probably just a dream,” Dyara said.

  “I thought so, too, but then we landed on Ouroboros and I saw the exact same setting. In my vision, we had the funeral by a river. At the end I shut the casket and it went over a waterfall. It was the same setting as where we landed—the river, the field... the waterfall.”

  “So... I’m going to die?” Cassandra asked, her blue eyes huge and blinking.

  “No, listen, in that vision Tanik and I were talking about how you tried to negotiate with the Cygnians and they killed you. I think Tanik is right. The simplest way for you to avoid what I saw is to not negotiate with them. Do you understand? If someone needs to go talk to them, now or later, it can’t be you.”

  Cassandra nodded. “Okay, but what does that have to do with me training with Samara?”

  “I had another vision, recently, on our way back to the castle. I haven’t told anyone yet, but it was about Samara.”

  Dyara’s gaze pinched with concern. “What did you see?”

  Darius told them about the stairwell that he couldn’t possibly have known about. He described th
e locked door he’d seen at the bottom, and the well with bodies inside, one of which looked like Samara. Then he mentioned the gold, heart-shaped locket around her neck.

  “What do you think it means?” Cassandra asked.

  “At first I thought maybe those bodies were ours and the vision was a warning that we’re all going to die here. So I asked Samara about the locket.”

  “So that’s what you were going on about,” Cassandra said.

  Darius nodded.

  “What did she say?” Dyara asked.

  “She said she’s never owned anything like that, and Tanik didn’t seem to know anything about it either.”

  “So maybe she’s going to find the locket later?” Dyara suggested. “What you saw might still be a vision of the future. Maybe the two visions are connected and it means that the Cygnians are going to find us here.”

  “Maybe,” Darius admitted. “But there’s another possibility. What do we know about Samara? It’s a hell of a coincidence that she and Tanik were reunited here after twenty years, and without either one of them actively searching for the other.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Dyara asked.

  “Maybe she isn’t Samara. Maybe the real Samara did die here, and her body is at the bottom of that well. This Samara could be using the zero point field to make Tanik think she’s his wife. I saw him do that, convincing a Ghoul king that he was the real captain of the Deliverance on our way through the Eye to reach the Crucible.”

  “She’d have to fool all of us, too,” Dyara said, shaking her head.

  “No she wouldn’t. We don’t know what Samara looked like, so she would only have to fool Tanik.”

  Cassandra looked skeptical. “Except Tanik said Revenants are immune to each other’s abilities, so how could Samara trick him like that?”

  Darius nodded. “He also said there are exceptions to that rule, like the Augur, and supposedly me. What if this Samara, whoever she is, is another exception?”

  Cassandra’s eyes went huge again. “Kak...” she whispered. “What if she is the Augur? I mean, I know he’s a man, but what if he’s making us all see a woman instead?”

  Darius smiled wryly. “Something tells me Tanik would figure that out pretty quick.”

  Cassandra’s brow furrowed. Then she appeared to get it, and her nose wrinkled. “Eww, Dad!”

  “Well, they’ve been separated for twenty years, right? And anyway, according to Tanik, people like the Augur are immune to each other. There’s no way Samara is the Augur, but Tanik never said that the Augur and I are the only ones who can influence other Revenants. She could be like me, sent here by the Augur to infiltrate our group.”

  “How would he know we’re coming?” Dyara asked.

  “Maybe he’s had a vision of his own death, and that vision told him where to look for the one who’s going to kill him.”

  “You mean you,” Dyara said.

  Darius shrugged. “Or Tanik. He’s the one plotting to kill the Augur.”

  Dyara pressed her lips into a determined line. “We need to go find that well. If there are dead bodies chained to the bottom, and one of them has a gold locket around its neck, then I’d say your vision is pretty clear. If not, then it was a vision of the future, and we should leave this place before we all end up in that well.”

  Darius nodded. “I agree.”

  “So what are we waiting for?” Cassandra asked. “Let’s go!”

  “Not yet,” Darius said. “We should wait until everyone’s asleep. Until we know what we’re dealing with, we can’t risk that Samara or anyone else finds out what we’re doing.”

  Dyara nodded slowly. “If she can fool Tanik into thinking she’s his wife, she can probably read our minds.”

  “Maybe,” Darius said. “Although I don’t think she can read my mind.”

  “That’s why she didn’t figure out why you were asking her about the locket,” Cassandra said.

  Dyara appeared to consider that. “Or it’s because she really is Tanik’s wife, and she can’t read our minds any more than he can.”

  “I really hope that’s true,” Darius replied. “Because if it isn’t, there’s probably a Revenant fleet on its way here right now.”

  Chapter 16

  “You promised,” Buddy said. His lips began to quiver, and his eyes grew round.

  Trista didn’t like the idea of stopping at the depot for food when they had an android on board, especially not with Buddy’s loose lips, but it was a long way to Earth. They would have to stop somewhere sooner or later anyway.

  “All right, fine, we’ll go get something, but you’d better shut the hell up about our metal friend.”

  “Who?” Buddy asked with squinty eyes.

  “Gatticus.”

  Buddy shook his head as if he didn’t recognize the name. Then Trista got it. “Very funny. Save the routine for strangers on the station.”

  Buddy grinned. “Yes, Captain.”

  Half an hour later Trista docked their tender ship with the outer ring of Drake Depot #926. They climbed the ladder through both airlocks and hauled themselves up inside a boxy security checkpoint. Their tender had already been scanned and physically searched by security drones on the way over from the Harlequin, but now it was time for a final check.

  Trista waited with Buddy while a hovering drone scanned them with a flickering blue fan of light. Space stations were all the same—paranoid about terrorists. Something about owning a multi-billion-credit piece of interstellar real estate made people jumpy.

  The drone flitted sideways and a robotic voice said, “You may proceed.”

  Trista started toward the exit of the checkpoint, both loathing and loving the sensation of artificial gravity. It had been a week since they’d left Callisto—a week in space with nothing but mag boots to pin them down.

  The door swished open and Trista followed the signs to the station’s food court.

  “Hey, wait up,” Buddy panted. “My legs are shorter than yours!”

  Trista snorted. “You sure that’s the problem?”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  Trista smiled. “You know what you find when you look up Togra on the datnet? Sleek little furballs running through fields, and leaping from tree to tree.”

  “It’s not my fault I have a slow metabolism. Besides, gravity’s lighter on Togora, and we don’t have any fields or trees, so how do you know I can’t run or leap like those show offs you saw?”

  Trista snorted, but she stopped and waited for him where their corridor ended in a T. She glanced back to see Buddy’s belly dragging on the deck as he ran on all fours to catch up.

  “Can I pick the restaurant?” he asked as he stopped beside her and rose up on two legs once more.

  “Don’t start,” Trista warned.

  “But—” Buddy cut himself off as a trio of armored Ghouls stalked by in front of them, all of them walking on two legs, with their heads brushing the ceiling. Weapons dangled from holsters strapped to their broad torsos, one for each of their four hands—not that they needed weapons with their claws and teeth.

  “Great,” Trista muttered as soon as they were gone. “There must be a Cygnian cruiser re-fueling here. Stay close,” she said, and glanced down at Buddy. But he was gone. “Buddy?”

  A heavy weight landed on her shoulder, and she winced as sharp claws bit through her jumpsuit.

  “Right here, Captain,” Buddy whispered.

  Under other circumstances Trista would have complained about carrying a twenty-pound ball of fat on her back, but it would be safer for both of them this way.

  She joined the corridor, still following signs to the food court, but making sure to keep a good distance from the Ghouls up ahead. A large communal dining area opened up to their right, and the Ghouls peeled out of the corridor, heading for a restaurant with whole animal carcasses dangling above the counter. Trista scowled. Just her luck. The Cygnians were hungry, too. She picked the restaurant farthest from them, a burger pla
ce that looked like it would be fast and cheap.

  Buddy groaned as she walked up to the counter. “If you’re not going to get me fish, you could at least get something that doesn’t taste like it was kakked out of a Slog.”

  The proprietor of the burger place, a Slog himself, overheard that comment and chased them off, shaking his fist and cursing.

  “Nice work,” Trista said. “Keep it up, and I’ll ask those Cygnians if they wouldn’t prefer fresh meat.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Buddy said.

  “Try me.”

  Trista went to another restaurant and ordered a pizza for them to share. She asked for anchovies on Buddy’s half to make him happy. It turned out to be a bad idea. He went from a sulking ingrate to a bubbly maniac. By the time he reached his third slice, he was standing on the table and singing an ode to the pizza.

  “Shut up and sit down,” Trista snapped, noticing looks they were drawing from people dining at adjacent tables. Fortunately the Ghouls didn’t seem to care. They were hunched over a table in the far corner of the dining hall, tearing bloody chunks off an entire ciervak carcass.

  Trista looked on in disgust. As she watched, she spotted a flicker of movement in the shadows behind their table. The Ghouls were too focused on their meal to notice.

  It was a human woman, sneaking up behind them with what looked like a pair of butcher’s knives. Trista’s whole body tensed in anticipation. She’s going to attack them. Her mind raced, wondering how to save the woman from herself, but there was no time and she was too far away.

  The woman lunged out of the shadows and stuck both knives deep into the neck of the nearest Ghoul. She yanked them out, screaming and stabbed again. Black blood spurted in her face. The Ghoul rounded on her with an outraged roar. He caught her next attack on two of his four arms, while his other two swiped at her head with razor-sharp claws. Her throat and face disappeared in a crimson tide, and she slumped to the deck.

  The wounded Ghoul tore the knives out of his arms, threw back his head, and let out a deafening roar; then all three of them fell upon the dead woman, claws and teeth flashing.

  Trista looked away with a sickened grimace. She caught a glimpse of the red sauce on her pizza, and nearly retched the contents of her stomach all over Buddy.