The God Eaters

  "Okay. Now shut up."

  "I don't hate you."

  "Don't matter."

  "Can we please say goodbye like civilized people? Please."

  In his nest of thorny weeds, Kieran grimaced and stuck out a hand. Ash offered his own, let it be swallowed up, seeing its red-knuckled paleness folded in that big brown hand for the last time.

  That touch held a moment too long, and in it he felt Kieran digging down into his pain like a toad in mud, hiding in it, believing stubbornly that it sheltered him. He was ditching Ash because it hurt, because nothing that didn't could be trusted. There was no way to change his mind. Up until now, that assumption had always been true. Ash blinked his eyes clear and let his hand fall.

  Kieran gave an explosive sigh. "Look --" he began.

  "I forgive you."

  "What?" A startled laugh.

  "Any sentence that comes out of nowhere and starts with 'Look' --"

  Kieran's laugh came again, a shade more genuine. "Yeah. Okay. I forgive you too. Just remember the good stuff, okay?"

  "Okay."

  "We were friends."

  "If you ever run into me again, as far as I'm concerned we still will be."

  At this, Kieran's face, for just half a second, showed something fragile before the bitter husk snapped closed again. And the sharp pain under Ash's ribs rang with harmonics, like a bell when its neighbor is struck.

  The train came upon them suddenly. One moment a distant grinding, the next a swell of noise that rumbled the ground, it came burning out of the distance at a hellish speed. Ash swallowed hard. There was no way to touch something like that. The task was impossible. The noise was immense. As it drew near, he counted four engines pulling in tandem, and the back end was still not out of the cut. The first few dozen cars were coal hoppers, piled high and shedding dust and little coal lumps at every jerk of the chuffing engines. Behind those, there were boxcars, dull green and rust-red and gray.

  Kieran burst out of his hiding place and worked himself up from a jog to a sprint. Ash staggered out of his own bit of cover, watching Kieran run away from him. Long legs flashing, Kieran matched speed with the train. He pulled even with a red-slatted wooden box like the side of a barn. Grabbed with both hands and hauled himself up and vanished.

  Didn't even look back or wave or -- or anything --

  Ash didn't mean to run after. Never actually decided. It was as if a hook was set in his ribcage and the line just fished him in. He was running as soon as Kieran's dust-bleached feet disappeared inside the car; maybe before. His lungs burned, he could hardly see, he stepped on sharp things and knew he'd lame himself, but that only made him tuck his head down and sprint harder. He'd never run so hard in his life. But he was doing it, was actually beating the train, if he could only keep it up long enough to reach that red car with the open door --

  And he was there, and knowing it was going to get him killed he grabbed the door's edge and pulled as hard as he could. Rolled across filthy, humming boards. Raised his head to see Kieran slumped in a corner with his arms wrapped around his knees, misery still etched into the shape of his face.

  "I'm coming with you," Ash gasped.

  Kieran's eyes were enormous, and in the dusty shade looked more yellow than green. His voice was wondering, joyful, and a little frightened. "I guess you are," he said.

  Chapter Twelve

  The men guarding the platform snapped to attention and saluted as their visitor stepped from the train. Those engaged in the work of rebuilding the prison's defenses knew better than to stop work, but were still tempted into risking a few glances. The Director was a figure almost of myth, the ideal of all the Watch stood for. A young man, some said only thirty, he was wiser than the eldest of his advisors. He was said to have been selected by his predecessor from a group of children brought in for Survey, and raised specifically for the office. He was said to be incorruptible, without weakness or mercy, more powerful in magic than any lesser officer could ever hope to become. It was said he could not be surprised, that he was bulletproof, and that he never slept.

  All this was true.

  Thelyan chose to allow the rumors, because they were useful to him. He was aware that their whispered transmission prevented them from being taken seriously. Their truth could not hurt him. What he truly was, no one had the frame of reference to guess. This body was even younger than the thirty years ascribed to it. He'd accelerated the useless years of childhood; when he'd met the previous Director, he'd been an adolescent of six.

  When he'd created the Watch, centuries past, he'd implanted in the arcana of the Director's secret knowlege a pass-phrase by which he could be recognized. Should a Talented child utter this phrase, he was to be trained to the directorship as quickly as possible. By this means, he'd assured he could take the reins of power personally whenever he chose to incarnate. There was a similar system in place in the Church proper, should he ever wish to be Heirophant. So far he'd never found that position useful; too much public scrutiny, not enough real power. If he needed the Heirophant to announce a new scriptural interpretation, he was perfectly capable of sending inspirations.

  He waited on the platform until the head of the Research Division arrived with a four-man escort for him. Colonel Warren was bright red, huffing as he hurried in the desert heat. His salute was adequate.

  "Welcome back, sir. We -- er, as you can see, the --"

  "Yes." Thelyan lifted his chin to indicate that he saw the wrecked fences, the shattered hole that was the cell block. "I'm not here to direct repairs. Is there anywhere sufficiently intact for us to speak privately?"

  "There is, but I must warn you, there is a possibility of cave-ins --" He broke off at Thelyan's look, realizing that the Director could probably outright remove the mountain if he so wished.

  "Are the wards intact?"

  "Yes, sir. They held."

  Thelyan nodded. He had set those wards himself. They were burned into bedrock. He had not expected a simple phenomenon of weather to break them, but it had crossed his mind that this particular storm might not have been natural. Later, he would examine the traces it had left, just to be sure. "And my particular test subject? I expect you've recaptured him by now."

  Warren was too red to blanch, but his cheeks went blotchy. "I'm sorry to report that we have not, sir."

  After two seconds' thought, Thelyan chose not to respond to this. Neither encouragement nor chastisement would affect the outcome in any way. The Colonel, like most others of his rank and many lesser members of the Watch, knew of the Director's particular scientific interest in Necromancers. Trevarde was already their highest priority, Thelyan was certain. After all, no one was ever dismissed from the Watch. Those who failed in their duty were removed from the chain of command in other ways. Thelyan had learned, through long study, that the human animal was perfectly capable of threatening itself; duplicated threats merely made it surly and prone to rebellion. He gestured for the Colonel to lead him, and the man sprang to obey with the alacrity guilt provided.

  The office to which he took Thelyan was not his usual one. On the way, Thelyan cast an interested eye over the damage the storm had wrought. It had been an exceptional bit of weather, apparently. In his long existence, he had encountered a storm of such destructive power only twice before, and thus it was tempting to ascribe this one to the same source. A clear mind could not succumb to such thinking, however; Thelyan had not, after all, made a study of severe weather. So he observed the cracks in the stone, the collapsed buildings and half-fallen tunnels, and remembered them, and made no judgement. Deeper within Churchrock's stone, the hollowed rooms and passages were intact.

  It was a shame that some of it had been wrecked. He did not enjoy destruction, or indeed unnecessary change of any kind.

  He took the offered chair in a room that had previously been a storage area. It was still lined with file cabinets. Thelyan made a mental note, if the various rebels and criminals ever left him some free time, to familiarize
himself with the contents of these files. He let Warren sit, waved the escort away, and closed the door from a distance with a gesture and a word. Another gesture, a few more words, drew a veil of silence around the room that only he could penetrate. Warren looked impressed, as he should; magic outside one's Talent, pattern-magic, was nearly effortless for Thelyan. The same effect would have required a five- or ten-minute ritual for Warren.

  Thelyan didn't even have to stand up. But then, he was the one who had invented the method.

  "I have your report," he said, "but of course it's out of date. Have you recovered all the subjects of special interest?"

  "All but Trevarde, sir. And one Ashleigh Trine, who was classified special interest because we were using him as training material, but he's only an Empath."

  Thelyan raised an eyebrow. "And a rebel propagandist, as I recall. He yielded us a large group in Ladygate this past winter. How do you suppose he managed to evade you?"

  "My guess is that he's with Trevarde. The two were confederates in the escape. See, Trevarde used --"

  "In a moment, Colonel. In your report you mention that the northern section was damaged and a number of subjects lost. The wording is vague. Do you now have a better understanding of the situation?"

  Warren shuddered at the mention of the northern section. It wasn't his responsibility, and Thelyan got the impression he avoided it as much as possible. "The, um, the Section Head hasn't reported yet, sir."

  "Very well, I'll speak with him later. Who's in charge of rebuilding? You? You've made the perimeter fence a priority, I assume."

  "Yes, sir. I've made it clear that the placement must be exact."

  "Good. Now. I believe you were about to tell me how the most secure detainment facility in the world suffered an escape of such excessive scope."

  Warren's jowls quivered, and his chin bobbed. "Your Mr. Trevarde was the instigator, sir. He somehow got hold of a quantity of prepared opium and introduced it into the coffee urn at the end of the inmates' dinner period. He was able to do this unobserved because he'd engineered a fight between two of his confederates, which distracted the guards."

  "The confederates' names?"

  "Trine and Sona. Sona's the one we brought in as a --"

  "Yes, I remember. Has Sona been recaptured?"

  "No, sir, but he isn't with Trevarde. We had his trail following the south road, but he lost us in a wash."

  "Very well. Advance his capture to a priority just below Trevarde's. Were there other confederates?"

  "No, sir."

  "I presume the guards who allowed themselves to be distracted were reprimanded. The policy of non-intervention in prisoner conflicts exists to prevent just such an eventuality."

  "They're dead, sir." Warren shrugged. "They drank the coffee."

  Thelyan nodded. "Continue."

  "The men went to their supper while the prisoners were in the yard. Nearly all of them drank the coffee and were poisoned. However, because the cooks refill the coffee urn several times during the course of the meal, the poison was diluted by stages, so that not all the men showed the same symptoms. Our initial diagnosis was food poisoning from the corned beef, which was the only item the guards ate that the prisoners didn't. The symptoms were consistent: dizziness, vomiting, sudden fatigue.

  "This was in the report, but I'll recap: we had four fatalities, nine men unconscious, and three more conscious but too ill to perform their duties. I pulled everyone from Research to hustle these fellows out-Ward for Healing. I distributed our remaining personnel with an emphasis on the outer barriers, as per policy, and had the prisoners locked down for the night.

  "We'd been aware for some time that a large thunderstorm was approaching. By ten-thirty, when it struck, the medical section had revised their diagnosis to opium poisoning, though they hadn't yet discovered which of the dishes had been poisoned. My judgement was that it was most likely introduced into the food stores during transport, as part of a rebel plot to attack the compound from outside." Warren's face was drawn with guilt. "I was disastrously wrong, as it turned out.

  Thinking that the attack would take place under cover of the storm, I pulled men from barracks to fully man the perimeter.

  "The hail was between four and six inches in diameter. There were at least two tornadoes in the area, as well as straight-line winds and subsequent heavy rains. We lost eight men to the storm, sir. Another five were injured.

  "The prisoners' escape through the broken roof of the cell block was detected immediately by a Watchman named Sarsen Cowder, who fired several shots and attempted to raise an alarm.

  Unfortunately, Cowder was immobile with a broken leg, having been thrown from a tower post by the wind. He was unable to give chase or shoot accurately. By the time others came to his assistance, forty-six of one hundred two prisoners had vacated the premises.

  "I was out there myself, sir. We needed every gun we had, by then. This decimated us."

  Thelyan nodded to indicate that he'd absorbed all this; he'd found that if he didn't give some kind of acknowledgment, people repeated themselves. "Have you discovered yet how they escaped their cells? Your report claimed the doors were opened from outside, with the tier mechanism."

  "Yes, sir. It was difficult to ascertain when I wrote the report, because the three guards who were on duty in the cells are all dead. One apparently ran from the cell block and was killed in a tunnel collapse. The other two were beaten to death by escaping prisoners. They were found in 2-E, though. Trevarde and Trine's cell. I've since interviewed many of the prisoners who failed to escape or were recaptured. Apparently Trevarde feigned an injury and Trine yelled for help. I know, sir," Warren held up a hand to forestall criticism. "That kind of ruse shouldn't have worked on them. All I can say is that their knowlege of your particular interest in this prisoner might have been a factor."

  "I see." He considered this. Knowing of Thelyan's intention to further study the subject Trevarde, the guards had most likely weighed the possibility of duplicity against the possible death of the Director's special project, and chosen to risk the former. A not illogical decision, if an unfortunate one. "Very well. How many prisoners were killed by fire from the gun posts?"

  "Well, none, sir." Warren looked puzzled. "We couldn't man the posts during the storm."

  "I would have thought those would be more essential than men on the tiers, Colonel."

  "I thought you knew, sir. Those posts get flooded in a heavy rain. We speculate that the whole cell block area was some kind of reservoir, before. You know, for whoever dug the tunnels in the first place."

  Thelyan waved that aside. "You Surveyed the cooks to be sure about the poisoning, I assume?"

  "No sir, just questioned them."

  "Survey them. Have you discovered yet how the prisoner obtained the drug?"

  Warren went fuschia again, deeply embarrassed. "Yes, sir. It was brought in by a guard. A man named Kerr Pastachan. He used the drug as a... a trade item. To obtain a hold over various prisoners from whom he extorted... sexual favors. We have him in lockup now. I thought it best to await your judgement in this matter."

  The Director leaned back in his chair, thinking about the implications. Trevarde must have whored himself, and repeatedly, to get a quantity of the drug sufficient to use for mass poisoning.

  The one Thelyan sought would not do that. That one's arrogance would be intrinsic, even in a mortal incarnation. Allowing himself to be humiliated would be impossible for that one.

  However, this was balanced by certain evidence on the other side of the equation, sufficient to warrant continued study.

  He'd learned all he needed to from this meeting. Thelyan disposed of the rest quickly. "Pastachan must have had confederates. Men who knew what he was doing and didn't report him. Find these men and hang them. Report Pastachan executed, and place him with the prisoners. Should his Talent be of interest you may use him as a test subject. If his Talent is not on the list for investigation, let him experience the lot of hi
s former charges for six months -- if they let him live that long. Then shoot him."

  Hearing this, Warren went pale, but he made no objection. "Yes, sir."

  "You've been insulated, Colonel, here in Research. But you must not allow yourself to forget that order is the first business of the Watch. Our conduct must be spotless."

  "Yes, sir." This speech seemed to give Warren strength. "I understand."

  "I'll remain here as long as I can. The situation in Rainet is under control, pending further developments, so I can guarantee my presence through tomorrow. Barring events that require me elsewhere, I'll supervise the whole of the recapture process. The first item of business is Trevarde. Tell me how you lost him."

  "The rain washed out the trace. No doubt he's somewhere in the desert to the west of the compound, if he survived. I have a pair of men out there right now, but I believe I've mentioned I'm understaffed."