15

Château Le Nôtre, Near Paris

Viceroy Arecibo

Arecibo strode along the covered parapet walk, his cloak flapping in the frigid wind as he ascended the rise to the corner tower of the chateau. Eyes on the subtle shadows of the trees in the orangery, he stole through the south ward to the battle gallery, careful to keep his cane from tapping on the walkway stones. The wall there was shared by the assembly hall, and Arecibo stopped to listen to the muffled voices of the Coalition of Khent members vibrating out of the stained glass windows and into the cool night.

A muted whistle to his right caught his attention. Dr. Dewar stood in the corner waving frantically. He’d been with Arecibo since the beginning, was integral in the research into Charlotte’s abilities, but ultimately Dewar was unsuited for this level of intrigue.

“My Lord,” Dewar whispered as he glanced over his shoulder nervously. “This way.”

Arecibo sighed, ripping at the green band of material wrapped around his sleeve as he went. He crumbled the wax stamp in his fingers, dropping it into the lawn. His cane dug into the soft grass, slowing his progress.

“Stop flailing about, Dewar,” Arecibo sighed. “You look like a deranged scarecrow.”

“Sir, I feared you met with an untimely end.” Dewar pulled on his suit jacket, adjusted his bow tie, and cleared his throat. “They said your convoy was detained.”

“We were searched and examined,” Arecibo snapped. “As if I were a common worker suspected of the Trembling Sickness. A refugee, Dewar, they behaved as if I were one of those wretched souls who have no right to be here.”

“Who would dare search a vessel of the Order?” Dewar shook his head, his face registering disdain.

“Baumton would, it seems,” His gaze traveled the colorful glass arches lining the wall. The chandeliers lit up the structure from within, and Arecibo thought of how satisfying it would be to destroy every one of the maudlin depictions of religious fervor depicted in those windows. “The Minister Secretariat should enjoy his slights towards the Order, for he will not be able to elude our wrath for much longer.”

“Sir, I have been inside the chambers, searched the crowd. No one from the Order is present that I can recognize.”

“So Baumton thinks he has surpassed us,” Arecibo rapped his cane on a gargoyle snarling from a bed of roses. “His arrogance is astounding.”

“There is a way in, past the guards, via the viewing gallery on the second floor.” Dewar motioned behind them.

“Lead.” Arecibo retrieved a small mechanical device from his inner cloak. As he followed Dewar, he wound the tension coil, keeping the release in the locked position. Slipping it into an outer pocket of his trousers, he patted it, a wicked grin pulling at his taut mouth.

Dewar led them along a high fence toward the inner ward. Their steps, muffled by soft ground, hid their approach. The doctor glanced back at him several times before Arecibo lost his patience.

“What is it?”

“There are rumors, my Lord,” Dewar said. “That the girl has surfaced. Was she in the sky settlement?”

“She was,” Arecibo nodded. “My informants were correct.”

Dewar looked at him, confused. “I still do not understand how they located her. We hid her so well. Moved her constantly.”

“I have my suspicions,” Arecibo said with a snarl. Wells.

“Did you not send the knights to retrieve her?”

“I did.” Arecibo smoothed a palm along his silvery hair and tugged on the ribbon securing it at his nape. He frowned. “And it proved much more difficult than anticipated. We nearly had her in our sights. Our plan was working when that errant knight appeared out of nowhere.”

Dewar’s face registered shock. “Ashton Wells is alive, my Lord? How is that possible? The blood at White Cliff alone was telling. We were sure the sea took his body when we found his armor in the rocks below.”

“He is more resilient than I gave him credit for,” Arecibo said. “And his hold on Blackburn is intact, after all.”

“She did not go with him. She returned to you, and the truth was extracted in debriefing,” Dewar offered.

“But she did not kill him,” Arecibo sighed. “Blackburn must be wiped completely. So there is nothing of him left to taint her loyalty.”

“Perhaps you should summon the other knights?” Dewar asked as he pushed through the doorway leading into the assembly chambers. “Not the creatures, but a standard battalion. Surely they can be trusted with knowing about your program—”

“No,” Arecibo cut across him. He did not tell Dewar what he’d seen on that floating shanty town. That the answer to all of the difficulties with the program was hidden where he’d least expected. In the most delicate of packages. “She cannot hide forever. In fact, Blackburn cannot seem to stay away from those she cares for. We watch them for the moment. Besides, there is something important for us consider now.”

“More important than retrieving the girl?”

“Not more…we still need her, and I have made strides to secure her, but I discovered something in that sky settlement that may be the missing variable we’ve suspected.”

“What is it?” Dewar looked at Arecibo with wide-eyed interest.

“A breakthrough of the highest degree.”

The muffled voices from within the chamber resonated, giving Arecibo a trill of anticipation. He adjusted his cloak, cleared his throat, and stepped through the door. “This is outrageous,” he roared as he swept into the vast assembly. “What is the meaning of this?”

Madame Dupond, France’s representative, turned with a gasp as Arecibo descended the steps leading into the room. The rap of his cane punctuated the manner in which he met the gaze of everyone he passed in turn.

Murmurs started around the room and rose to a full-scale cacophony, the derisive tones recognizable even if the foreign insults were lost in the clamor.

The Minister Secretariat rapped his knuckles on the podium in front of him.

“Who is that?” Baumton’s angry voice reverberated off the wood arches of the lavishly decorated chambers of the Council of Khent. “Do you dare interrupt these proceedings?”

“Why not?” Arecibo snapped, facing the elaborately carved seat upon a dais. He frowned at twin marble cherubs flanking the platform. Their chubby hands held aloft perfectly carved bunches of grapes above their laughing smiles. Arecibo addressed the Minister Secretariat directly, despite being surrounded by almost forty of the council’s representatives from the ruling houses and governments of Europe and Asia. “You dared to hold this accord without the presence of The Order of the Sword and Scroll, Minister.”

“Viceroy Arecibo.” Baumton’s face twisted with the words. “I should have known.” He waved back the approaching guards and folded his hands, leaning down to look at Arecibo. “It seems we have not ferreted out all of your spies after all.”

“This coalition has no right to launch an offensive against the Peaceful Union. We order you to stand down this proposed invasion before—”

Baumton’s wheezing laugh nearly sent Arecibo’s eye twitching.

“You ‘order’ me?” Baumton cackled. “The Coalition of Khent has allowed The Order too much leeway in this matter as it is.”

“Allowed us?” The translators whispered frantically to their masters, and Arecibo fought to keep the pulse pounding at his temples from driving him mad.

“When those wretched American colonies nearly tore themselves apart during the States War, the whole of Europe stood by as your Order’s philosopher monks intervened for the North, promising innovation and stability.” Baumton raised his bony hands as if waiting for something.

“And you had it,” Arecibo shot back. “They are the authors of countless advancements in both mechanica and medicine. In the past decade alone, the strides they have ushered in are breathtaking.”

“Mi scusi,” a man to Arecibo’s right called out.

“Signori Vataglia,” Baumton replied, pointing at the Italian representative. “What do you have to say on this matter?”

Arecibo rolled his eyes as Vataglia rose, adjusted his lace cuffs dramatically, and babbled for quite some time before allowing his translator to chime in.

“These breathtaking advances you speak of were essential to survive The Great Calamity, a disaster of their own doing. And a tragedy that left the rest of the world to deal with the consequences. Increasingly violent weather, the wasteland vapor that reaches our shores, the ruined seas.”

Madame Dupond nodded her assent, chiming in, “And the Order stepped in, promising that division among city-states would make them easier to control. That ambition and greed among the governors would assure not one of the domes came to too much power.”

“Viceroy Arecibo,” Baumton’s enormously bushy eyebrows appeared burnished in the light of the crystal chandeliers suspended over the floor of the gathering. Exceedingly wrinkled and dry, Baumton nearly collapsed in on himself like a dusty seed pod, the old man’s voice nonetheless held the sharp retort of an impatient school master.

It grated on Arecibo’s nerves.

“The Order’s experiment with what was left of America’s republic is a failure. Those people are erratic, reckless, and willfully unable to resist putting themselves in peril. So much so that a continent-wide affliction of Biblical proportions has taken hold of the entire region.”

“Biblical, really?” Arecibo snapped, irritated. “It is a controllable situation, not the wrath of heaven.”

“And now it is taking hold here,” Baumton continued, ignoring Arecibo’s remark. “Monstrous men and women with unholy strength and rotten bodies. This atrocity started in the bowels of that country.”

Arecibo noted the rising flush on the old man’s neck and face and wondered if he might drop dead as they spoke. It would certainly save him the headache of assassinating him later.

Vataglia rattled off another string of increasingly passionate utterings, and then the translator, in flat affect, said, “Time after time, they have brought themselves to the brink of destruction. Why should the rest of the world not give them the final push they need to be gone forever?”

“Because the land is still salvageable with time. This Trembling Sickness will burn through eventually as did other…plagues, if you will, leaving the country ripe for restructure. There are hundreds of thousands of able-bodied subjects that, with the right kind of rule, would be a force to be reckoned with.”

“That is the problem, is it not?” A woman rose in the back, her movements causing a ripple of murmurs to spread among the crowd. Long, chestnut hair worn in a braid at her shoulder, her gown rustled as she moved. Doña Christina, Spain’s second-born princess, called down from the seats behind Arecibo. “It is my country that fights to keep them from storming our shores with their affliction and their desperate poor. We demand this Outer City be destroyed. It is a launching point for their refugees. The blockades fail to keep them away. They swarm our streets like rats. For the sake of all of us, blow them from the skies.”

“This is madness. That territory is under the protection of The Order of the Sword and Scroll!” Arecibo faced Baumton, his face a mask of anger. “Lest you forget, we have toppled rulers more entrenched than your infant coalition.”

“Corrupt and divided,” Baumton said evenly. “The Order is not what it once was, and despite what you claim, is no longer able to do much of anything, Arecibo.”

“How dare you speak of the very ones who put your family—”

“Enough,” Baumton shouted, his voice surprisingly strong for someone so decrepit. “Send your ragged knights or what is left of them if you think it will do anything to stop this. The beauty of this coalition is that you may get to one of us. Or even ten of us. But the ruling families of Europe will not be stopped. Not by the Order and certainly not by an insignificant group of mechanics and scientist in a dying land.”

“The governors convene…” Arecibo began.

“Let them. What can they do against all of Europe?” Baumton sneered.

“So you will raze the entire country, then?” Arecibo asked, his expression properly downcast.

“Eventually, yes.” Baumton shrugged. “They are crippled militarily, and the destruction of Outer City will topple the country further. It is their silk road. Commerce and trade pass through there connecting all the still functioning domes. Once it is gone and, as you said, the affliction runs its course, this coalition will retake the colonies as they should have been a hundred years ago.”

“Very well,” Arecibo said, reaching into his pocket and retrieving the device. “If it is war you seek. Then you shall have it.” Releasing the tension coil, Arecibo tossed the impact grenade at Baumton and dove behind a marble cherub.

The old man’s face registered disbelief a moment before the blast destroyed the entire dais. Rubble tore across the chamber, pelting the occupants who ran shouting for cover. In the dust and confusion, Arceibo ran for the stairs, pausing to knock Vataglia to his knees with a swipe of his cane. Pulling the handle from the shaft, Arecibo withdrew a dagger, leapt upon the screaming Italian, and plunged it to the hilt. Madame Dupond gasped, her attendants shielding her as her gaze fixed on Arecibo with terror.

“That is two heads of the coalition serpent down,” he snarled before turning and taking the stairs two at a time.

Dewar, quaking in the dark hallway, followed after him as Arecibo made his escape along the fence.

“My Lord, why would you do that? They will surely attack now,” Dewar panted when they reached the lawn.

“Yes.” Arecibo wiped the dagger on his cloak.

“What…why?” Dewar stumbled next to him, his face pale and sweaty. “That is not what we were sent here to accomplish, sir.”

Arecibo stifled a sneer at the man’s cowardice. “No. It was not.”

“If there was any chance at staying their hand it is gone. W-why would you deliberately—”

“It is the only way to wrestle the Americas from both Europe and The Order.”

The fire of the torches lining the walls cast a strange shadow on them both, and in the quiet of the grounds, dawning passed behind the doctor’s eyes. “You want to rule. You…you want to be king of the Americas.” Dewar’s hand went to the pendant hanging at his chest. The emblem of the sword and scroll. “That is treason, my Lord. To plot against the Order is unforgivable.”

Arecibo moved blindingly fast, striking at Dewar’s heart with the dagger in one fluid motion. The doctor fell without a sound. Stepping over his body, Arecibo smoothed the hairs at his nape and sheathed the blade in his cane.

“Was that entirely necessary?” the soft voice behind Arecibo pulled a smile from his lips, and he turned.

Doña Christina stepped from behind the pillar, her large, dark eyes fixed on Arecibo.

He bowed, his gaze never leaving hers. “Your Highness.”

“I was convincing, yes?” The amusement in her voice was far from the feigned anger and desperation she’d shown inside. “I actually said, ‘blow them from the skies.’”

“Riveting.” Arecibo held out his hand, and she took it. He led her into the orangery and they stood beneath branches laden with ripe fruit. He picked one, biting through the bitter rind before handing it to her.

She drank the juice, wiping the sweetness from her ruby lips as she held his gaze. “And now?” she asked.

“And now we fight for our thrones.”