Eve of Destruction (5 page)

Maltus swore under his breath. “They stole the journal. You might have been able to get it back.”

“Are you angry with me for not killing them all, or yourself for not seeing this coming?”

He grunted. “Pick your poison. The children’s train should be arriving soon. You need to be on it.”

She hissed. “You know I don’t like trains.”

“You’ll like Eve and Zach being dead even less,” he countered. “Make sure no harm comes to them. I still have faith she’ll become what we need her to be.”

“When will you decide that?”

“Soon.”

“And when she fails?”

He turned to face the shadowy figure. All he could see beneath her hood was the glimmer of her green eyes and a single lock of white-streaked auburn hair dangling from her forehead.

“Then you get to kill her,” Maltus whispered. “And may the Goddess forgive us.”

Chapter Two

“The Exarch tells us that it took the Goddess an eon to create life and many more to refine it into what we see today,” Simon Chaval said to the audience filling the Hall of Innovation. “In her divine wisdom, Edeh understood the necessity of interdependence—she knew that for her children to survive, our fates needed to be linked. And so she gave us the Fane, the grand temple of life that inexorably binds all of us as one.”

Chaval leaned forward, his eyes drifting back and forth across the crowd. “But now, in these dark times, the Fane suffers as we all suffer. It teems with discontent, for the children have turned against their mother. They have abused the gifts she gave them, and we only have a small time in which to repent for their sins.”

The crowd broke into thunderous applause, and from her perch on the balcony above the stage, Amaya Soroshi watched it all with morbid fascination. A handful of men in the audience cheered audibly, but the rest were content to let their hands do the talking. It was considerably more dignified than the boorish, bellowing street-side crowds Chaval so often gathered, but this was a group of wealthy investors and entrepreneurs. They at least tried to feign some measure of civility.

“The Enclave Magisters like to remind us of all the wonders their magic has brought us, and certainly our civilization has grown and flourished since our independence from Esharia. But consider how much of that progress has come not from those privileged enough to walk through the doors of a university, but from the back-breaking labor of real men and women over the last few decades. This room, this hall, this entire city—they are all testaments to the power of the human mind, to the power of visionaries like yourselves who dare to dream of a new Arkadia, one stronger and more self-sufficient than ever before.”

More applause, this round much louder than the first. It was a pattern Chaval followed with precision. He would start softly and then gradually swell towards a riotous climax. By that point, those who were already part of the Industrialist movement felt more confident in their choices than ever before, and those who straddled the fence found themselves leaping off it to join him. Chaval might not have been a mage, but the spell he wove was just as powerful as the eldest magister.

He waved a hand to silence the crowd. “We must all take a look around ourselves and examine the state of the world in which we live. We are at war…but it isn’t just our way of life that is under attack. Our very
existence
is now threatened by the magi and their Enclave. Even in the face of unparalleled tragedy, they continue to insist that they are not our enemies. They claim that the attack on Kalavan was the work of only a few isolated individuals, nothing more. But in our hearts, we all know how tired their excuses have become.”

Before the crowd exploded again, Amaya decided it was time to try and slide closer to her employer. She wouldn’t dare interrupt one of his speeches, but she did need to get his attention the moment it was over. He would undoubtedly be pleased with his performance, but she knew his response to the message she had just received from Lushden would be less…enthusiastic.

Chaval stepped in front of the podium, his eyes narrowing. “Two hundred years ago, just before the dawn of our independence, the magi destroyed the small, helpless nation of Vakar. They killed tens of thousands of people, but the Enclave assured us it was merely the fault of a single reckless lunatic. Fifty years ago, the world watched as the Talami warlords wrought final devastation to their own nation, and again the Enclave insisted it was merely the work of a handful of fanatics. And then, only a year ago, we all stood by in horror as thousands of our brothers and sisters were ruthlessly cut down by yet another rogue mage—and once more the Enclave has the audacity to tell us that it was an isolated incident.”

He shook his head, and his voice darkened. “Well, I say we have endured enough accidents. I say the Goddess has been sending us a message for hundreds of years, and we have simply ignored it. Her Fane is not a tool for us to use; it is a treasure we must protect. It is time we learned to leave it alone.”

Amaya pushed past several of the other guards to stand at the side of the stage. She didn’t want to distract him, but she knew this speech would be coming to a close soon and she wanted to be ready. She needed to catch his eye before he was swallowed by the horde of quasi-worshippers. It happened often enough she’d come to expect it.

“A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity stands before us, my friends, and I am proud to see we are embracing it,” Chaval went on. “Instead of twisting the Fane to our selfish purposes, we are learning to be self-sufficient. We are creating a new way of life—a life of innovation, progress, and wonders we have never dreamt of before. My parents never ventured more than a few kilometers outside their home town in their entire lives, and now you and I can ride a train across the whole of Arkadia in only a few days. My grandmother lost her hand to a backfiring musket in the Polerian War, but now our soldiers fight with reliable and powerful weapons that are the envy of the entire world.” He swiveled his eyes back and forth across the crowd, his tone sobering. “And when I was diagnosed with Hulen’s Disease only three years ago, a doctor was able to cure me with medicine and science. Because of the efforts of men and women like you, every day we liberate ourselves from our dependency upon the Fane. And soon we will be able to stand alone. May the Goddess bless you all.”

Standing a mere fifteen meters away, Amaya expected to be able to catch Chaval’s eye easily, but within seconds of his last word he had already been swallowed by a throbbing mass. Reporters from every newspaper in the country swarmed over him like parasites, and his immediate bodyguards did their best to give him some distance. She sighed to herself and decided to take a different approach—looking at the crowd below, she found the evening’s guest of honor, Harold Varm, and veered off toward him and the other distinguished inventors.

She had always found it oddly amusing that despite the near saint-like status most of the Dusties endowed upon men like Varm, the crowds typically mauled Chaval instead and left the actual inventors alone. Tonight was no different. Varm and the others sat alone at a table in the back of the dining hall, and Amaya was able to get close to them without much difficulty. The band in the corner struck up an annoyingly upbeat melody, and many of the evening’s patrons left their chairs to dance and celebrate. They’d been told exactly what they wanted to hear, and that always seemed to put smiles on their faces far more easily than actual facts.

Few of the people in the Hall had any idea how bad the violence had gotten on the streets here in western Arkadia, and even those who did certainly didn’t want to hear about how many workers had been maimed in the great factories on the northern side of the city. Perhaps the most shocking thing, however, was how all these people were somehow able to ignore the acrid industrial fumes in the air the moment they stepped outside into the streets of Cadotheia.

It was as fascinating as it was sickening, really. The capacity of people to believe in something despite all evidence to the contrary—that was the most powerful weapon in Chaval’s arsenal, and he knew how to wield it better than anyone. People wanted to feel good about themselves and the choices they had made. They wanted to feel right. And who was he to argue with them?

Eventually Chaval managed to drift over to the inventor’s table, a wide and utterly insincere smile stretched across his face. He was just over fifty now, and gray hairs were slowly but surely conquering his meticulously trimmed beard. The top of his head was bald, but what remained of his once black dome now encircled a shiny, pale scalp. His eyes were a vibrant brown, and his frame was quite trim and fit for a man of his age. All in all, he was passably handsome without being threatening, and it made him a popular man when he met his supporters in person.

He quickly and firmly shook Varm’s outstretched hand. The newspapermen, following Chaval around like a drooling pack of hounds, frantically scribbled notes of every word and every twitch.

“Miraculous,” Chaval said. “Once again, Harold, you’ve exceeded all my expectations. This is truly the work of a genius—an Arkadian genius.”

“I think you may give me too much credit,” Varm replied, his chubby face flushed with embarrassment. “It’s just an extension of something we already use.”

“Ah, but that is the artistry, my friend. Taking disparate things and putting them together into a new whole.”

“Ever the politician,” Varm murmured.

The newspapermen laughed heartily, but the inventors all seemed hesitant. Only when Chaval smiled himself did they finally let themselves chuckle.

“True, but I speak from the heart, here,” Chaval said. “I guarantee this will be a rousing success.”

Varm raised an eyebrow. “Rousing enough to fetch me production contracts once you’re elected?”

Chaval clapped him on the back. “Absolutely.”

Amaya watched impassively as the gathering of men and women fawned over Varm’s latest inventions. Some of the Hall’s staffers—which mostly consisted of overly made-up women in flowing dresses—rolled the display cart between tables, stopping leisurely whenever someone wished to take a closer look.

Many of the gadgets were undeniably impressive, especially the centerpiece. It was a cylindrical attachment one could add to a rifle—Varm called it a “scope,” if she remembered correctly—to aim more accurately and see farther than the naked eye. It was an ingenious thing, if only an extension of the magnifying glass or telescope, and Chaval was certainly right to predict its success. Some of the other creations wouldn’t be so lucky in the long run.

But that hardly mattered. Innovation was the word of the day here in Cadotheia, and to a lesser extent all of Arkadia. Men and women who could before only look forward to a drab life of herding livestock or living off the streets had their imaginations captivated by opportunity; all it took was one great invention to secure a future for themselves and their children. It was an infectious euphoria, and it had spread across the country like wildfire. Amaya just couldn’t help but wonder if it would burn itself out sooner rather than later.

For every Harold Varm, once a destitute pig farmer, there were hundreds of others whose inventions would never see the light of day. Many would starve to death on the streets or turn to violence and contribute to the growing culture wars bloodying the alleyways. And of course, most Arkadians would simply be trading a hard-working but earnest life on the farm for a dark and dangerous one in a factory. They would exchange their plows for machines that would almost certainly leave them crippled before they grew old. Was that really an improvement? Was that the future they were willing to fight to protect?

Perhaps, Amaya mused, the promise of change by itself was enough. Thousands of kilometers away in her home country of Talam, her people tried desperately to plant crops in fields ravaged by reckless magi. The Lo’Sai Dynasty had thought nothing of the so-called torbos—the common folk—that made up the bulk of their population. Even now, decades after the dynasty’s fall, her people still suffered. It was why she was forced to work for a man like Chaval to bring home Arkadian drakes…

Amaya finally caught her employer’s eye as he schmoozed with some of the other inventors. He nodded fractionally, and she stepped off to the side of the crowd and waited for him to break free. Fortunately it only took a few minutes.

“Problem?” he asked softly when he got close enough to slide an arm around her waist.