They had finished the flatbread and cheese and he was topping off her goblet when the building began to shake. The curtains swayed, the tray rattled, the statuary jittered briefly in place, and the tremor faded. Though Callie clutched the couch, Guivas weathered it unconcerned.
“Don’t you worry the volcano will erupt?” she asked finally.
“It can’t unless I let it.” The Partas handed her the newly filled goblet and smiled. A shadow flicked across his face, and Callie glanced around, thinking someone had entered the room. But they were alone. His lips curved as he watched her, waited for her . . .
To understand. He was Tohvani. Or rather—
Her confusion must have shown, for his brow arched. “You thought we could only appear in that humiliating nakedness? Not at all.”
Elhanu had said they’d found a way around his prohibition, but surely he didn’t mean because his own power had failed. Besides, this man was as solid as she was. She’d seen the slave women rubbing oil into him.
Then she remembered something else Pierce had taught them— extended exposure to the fire curtain eroded the barriers between human and alien, allowing the Tohvani to enter and inhabit human bodies. The man with whom she spoke was not the one who owned this body. Or at least, not the one who had originally owned it.
The realization had the same effect on her as suddenly discovering he had leprosy.
The Partas smiled. “I assure you we’re both very happy with this arrangement. He invited me, after all. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“Why don’t you let him tell me that?”
He picked up the goblet, watching her in the mirror. “So suspicious. So sure everything we do is bad. So sure you’re right.” He sipped his wine, closing his eyes as he held it in his mouth, savoring the taste. Finally he swallowed and looked at her. “You won’t even talk to us. How can you know our side of the matter? Where is the proof that we’re wrong and Elhanu’s right? Where is the proof you can even walk through the portal should you find it?” He shook his head. “There is none. You’re operating solely on faith.”
Callie fingered the plastic band around her ankle. “I’d have to operate on faith regardless. And anyway, it’s not faith that’s the issue, it’s the object of faith.” She met his gaze. “And while I haven’t walked through the portal yet, and don’t know anyone who has, I do know Elhanu.”
“And of course you could not be deceived. Especially not with that mind-control switch he put in your brain, hmm?”
“If it was a mind-control switch, shouldn’t it be disabled now that I’m ‘free’ in Splagnos?”
He scowled. “Why must you be so stubborn? Look what we’re offering you!”
“Slavery and deception?” She snorted. “I know your fire curtain is no secret to eternal life. No matter how finely calibrated your devices are, long-term exposure still leads eventually to madness and deformity. That’s why every city on the plain has a termination policy for those who cease to conform to the acknowledged standards.”
He laughed again. “How could you know—”
“It’s in the manual.”
“Just because your manual—”
“It hasn’t been wrong yet. And I’ve seen the Zelosian execution booths in action. Beyond that, it’s the only explanation for how you’ve been able to keep your population of alleged immortals small enough to live within the dome.”
He swirled the wine left in his glass, sniffed its bouquet, his nostrils flaring, then sipped and savored. “You’ll die on Earth eventually, too,” he said at last.
She felt a thrill of triumph. “Better there than here.”
“Why? What is so bad about here? Even if the curtain is addictive, how is that any worse than the normal aging you’ll go through on Earth?”
She looked at the two of them in the mirror. “Maybe it’s not. But I’d rather do it Elhanu’s way. Your kind care nothing for us. You’re just using us to gain your own end.”
“And he isn’t?”
“His care is genuine, proven when he took us into himself to free us. You only pretend. Everything you do proves that fact. You just want to win your master’s appeal—and who cares what you destroy in the process?” She turned to look at him directly. “You claim to offer eternal life, yet your neighbors hate you, the outside air is poisoned, and the plain is littered with the ruins of past ‘heavens.’ And I’ve had a gardener clipping the same plant outside my window for days now. What kind of eternal life is that? Clipping the same plant day after day?”
The Partas Guivas lay propped on his elbow, probing her with his eyes. Silence closed around them. A sulfur-tainted breeze drifted in the window. Somewhere a fountain gurgled.
Finally he sighed. “I’m sorry you feel this way, Callie, because you’re not going home. Not for a very long time, anyway.” He set the goblet on the table and sat up. “You’re right. People do die here, but not so many as you think, for Splagnos is bigger than it looks. It has many levels below ground, you see, all lined with isolation cells.”
His eyes held her, pouring images and sensations into her mind— the sour smell, the cold hard floor, the distant screams, the eternal blackness, the unending, mind-wrenching loneliness. She shuddered with horror but tried not to show it.
“You’ll spend the rest of your life there,” he murmured, so softly she barely heard him. “We’ll take very good care of you. But since all your friends are just as caught as you, you’ll never see them again. Any of them . . .”
Callie tore her eyes from his, and stared at her hands. Pierce’s promise ring gleamed on her left third finger.
“Your life is ours, dear girl,” he whispered. “Your only choice now is whether to live down there, alone, or to live up here, with the man you love.”
Callie studied the ring, the stone’s red facets flaring white as they caught the light. Her fingers trembled, and she clenched them tightly.
“Is Elhanu worth your life?” Guivas murmured.
Nausea swirled under her heart.
“Callie. Answer me.”
She refused to look at him, seeking desperately for some touch of reassurance through the link. Something. Anything.
But her insides remained as cold and dead as ever. No warmth, no pulse of strength, just empty, silent deadness.
And then, a single thought: It’s not trust unless it looks really bad.
Her heart leaped. It looks really bad, all right. And it must have looked bad for those Zelosian prisoners, too. But he delivered them.
The Partas interrupted her thoughts. “We’ll hold your trial tomorrow. You may give me your answer then.”
She lifted her gaze, suddenly angry. “You can have it now. The very choice shows what kind of master you serve. And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Who is the better master? Well, as far as I’m concerned, it’s no contest. Elhanu can deliver us if that’s what he wishes. I don’t believe your master’s power or that of any of your creepy friends can hold a candle to his.”
The Partas Guivas stared at her long and hard, his eyes dark, his face suffused with blood. Finally he said, “You want to play hardball? Fine. But know this—I serve no master but myself. And my power is more than you know.”
Callie gaped at him, rocked by the impact of his words. “I serve no master but . . .” Was this Cephelus himself?
“Yes, you ought to shiver. I could kill you with my little finger.” The whites of his eyes had disappeared, swallowed by solid black orbs. “And you’re right—I don’t care about you. You’re only a weapon, a pawn—one I intend to use to the fullest. We’ll see how loyal you are when things start to hurt. Both of you.”
He glanced at the mirror again. “A better master, is he? Well, what good is he if he can’t save you from me?”
He stood and left the room. A few minutes later his giant came to bring Callie back to Mira.
CHAPTER
30
Callie awakened the next morning to a shaking bed and rattlin
g windows—ominous portents of the day to come. As the seismic shivers faded, the gardener outside her window began clipping again. She stared at the ceiling, wishing she didn’t have to get out of bed.
Sleep had been long in coming last night, held at bay by churning afterthoughts of her interview with the Partas. That it was Cephelus himself she’d faced gave her satisfaction, for he wouldn’t waste his time with her if she wasn’t close to success. But the way he’d kept eyeing the mirror had nagged at her. Perhaps he wasn’t admiring her—or himself— after all. Perhaps he was looking at someone behind the glass. Like Pierce. However Cephelus threatened Callie, Pierce would know he could stop it.
A rustle from the doorway preceded Mira’s voice. “It’s time.”
Callie shut her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to slow the wild acceleration of her pulse. She clung to her memories, reminding herself of what Elhanu had done and what he was and what he’d promised. It’s not trust unless it looks really bad. And it must’ve looked really bad for those Zelosian prisoners when they were put down into the mine.
It must’ve looked bad when they were tortured, too. The knot in her stomach twisted.
Don’t think about that.
“Callie.”
“I heard you.”
She got up, put on her tunic, and braided her hair. In the kitchen, Mira had prepared oatmeal and fresh peaches, but Callie’s stomach was too tight to eat them. The two women sat at the table in silence as the news played on the table screen. A picture of Pierce appeared, the announcer reporting that the captives would be given their final chance for absolution at today’s trial. After a week of kind and gracious treatment, it was expected that all would see the light and join the Splagnosians in new life. After the first few words, Callie recognized the report as another attempt to sway her, and turned her gaze to the window, willing herself to tune it out.
Time ticked slowly by until suddenly Mira stood and snatched the bowl from Callie’s place, her lips tight, her eyes bright with moisture. She cast their utensils in the cleanser, yanked open the kitchen door, gestured Callie outside, and escorted her wordlessly through the city to a side door in one of the larger government buildings. A guard in a short leather skirt brought her to the other holdouts, who were waiting in a dimly lit corridor—Whit, Evvi, John, Brody, and Meg. The sight of them was deeply heartening. That Pierce wasn’t among them didn’t worry her. She knew if he had turned, she would have heard of it, and being the Partas’s ward—and “a worthy antagonist”—he would certainly have a special place in all this.
They shuffled down the hall to a vast chamber packed with spectators, where mammoth pillars marched in tandem down a central aisle as long as a football field. A strip of gold-flecked black marble gleamed between facing lines of red-roped silver stanchions, set up to restrain the jostling crowd. Armed and armored giants stood the length of both ropes, and gray Tohvani bodies covered the pillars and vaulted ceiling.
Silence greeted the prisoners as they entered, the rustle of their clothing and the slap-thump of their bare feet echoing loudly around them. Callie stared at John’s back, feeling the Splagnosians’ hostility, and wondering if there were familiar faces in that crowd. She couldn’t bring herself to look, though, and by the time they reached the gauntlet’s end, her chest was tight and her hands sweat slicked and icy.
A circular dais arose at the head of the hall, surrounded by an expanse of shining black marble across which the opposing lines of guards angled away from each other to encircle the stage. The Partas Guivas sat upon it in a great white chair, bracketed by guards in gold gilt and high-ranking government ministers. Above it all, a domed ceiling glowed sky blue.
A man stood on the dais at Guivas’s immediate right, wearing the gold-banded garment of citizenship, and Callie’s heart seized the instant she saw him. His blue eyes flicked once over the prisoners, then fixed on a point above them, his teeth clenched. He looked ravaged—thin, haggard, almost as gray as a Watcher, with deep circles under his eyes. Even from the distance she could see him shiver and twitch. He probably hadn’t slept in days.
The prisoners were directed into a line along the dais’s base, and the Partas Guivas let his green-eyed gaze slip over them one by one. Callie refused to meet it when it reached her, lifting her chin and staring at a spot midway up the blue dome. His attention moved on, and her glance caught Pierce’s. A current leapt through her at the contact, but at the same time she saw a terror that shook her to the core.
“For six days you have enjoyed our hospitality,” the Partas Guivas said finally. “Your counselors have freely answered all your questions and tried hard to persuade you against throwing away your lives. But you have spurned them. And if you will not join us, we must consider you our enemies. I give you one last chance. Declare allegiance to Splagnos and join with us in the baptism of fire or become slaves of the state.”
No one moved or spoke.
He glanced at Pierce and said something Callie could not hear. When Pierce did not respond, Guivas waved a hand at one of the guards. “Begin with the redhead.”
He stood and walked to a wooden box standing at the side of the dais beside the last pillar. A small gate permitted him egress and closed behind him as the box rose six feet alongside the pillar and stopped. Simultaneously the throne sank into the floor and a panel slid over it. At Callie’s back, a motor whined and whirred, and as the guards herded the prisoners to one side, she saw two thick bronze poles spearing out of the floor toward the roof and beyond them a stone table rising into view. When the poles reached their full extension, the whirring stopped. A succession of clicks and thumps followed, and then men hastened forward to activate the device. As the membrane of blue fire leaped between the poles, several gaunt Splagnosians in loincloths emerged from a side door.
“You can stop this whenever you wish,” Guivas said to Pierce. And to one of the guards, he ordered, “Bring him closer, where he can feel it.”
Pierce was brought to within arm’s reach of the pulsating energy. Another guard dragged Callie to the table. Four sets of shackles told her what they intended—she was to be chained onto the stone to serve the needs of those who came through the curtain.
The guard lifted her onto the table, and at first it all seemed so unreal, she didn’t even struggle. He snapped the bracelet around her left wrist, his hands rough and heavy, and she drew a low hiccupping breath—part cry, part sob. The stone was icy beneath her thin shift, and as he moved to her left ankle, she struggled for calm, reaching as never before for the invisible, untouchable link. No matter what they did to her body, they couldn’t touch her soul. And if they killed her, they would only send her home.
She was breathing rapidly now, a selfish, craven part of her hoping fiercely that Pierce would give in and save her. Cold metal pressed unpleasantly against her anklebone as the latch snicked shut, and terror— so violent, so oppressive she could hardly breathe—pounded at the doors of her soul.
“No!” The cry rang sharply, tinged with desperation.
The guard froze. Callie turned her head to see Pierce launch himself into the curtain, his body seized in midair, spread-eagled, jittering with blue-green-gold incandescence. Despite Mira’s assurance that this was a pleasant experience, he screamed, the sound mingling with Callie’s own shriek of denial.
It held him for an exceedingly long time. Sparks flew along his limbs and up the poles. The curtain flickered as the blue and green drained into his body. He shuddered and twitched and screamed until only blackness swirled around him. Then, in a blinding flare, he was hurled out, staggering for balance as the crowd erupted in a savage cheer. Horrified, Callie watched him veer drunkenly into the line of guards—
And drop all pretense of incapacitation as he slammed into the nearest giant, shoulder to belly, the two of them falling in a tangle of legs and arms. Seconds later blue fire flared from the pile. The short triple bursts found their marks with deadly accuracy. The guards to either side of him dropped like
empty garments. Then he was up on one knee, his SI pointing toward the box where the Partas stood openmouthed with astonishment. Three blue lances cut the air, and Guivas crashed forward to the floor, a gray vapor trailing briefly behind him and vanishing.
By then Pierce had taken out the guards closest to the other prisoners and was running for Callie, the guards beyond her diving for cover. Behind him their fellows had recovered their wits and began firing on him as the spectators scrambled to escape. Callie could see the lances of light striking his body, but this soon after exposure they didn’t faze him. He loomed over her, his face awful. Sweeping the SI from side to side as he continued to fire, he gripped the ankle shackle that held her, wrenched it out of the stone, then did the same with the wrist restraint. As she scrambled down, he upended the whole table, pulling it from its moorings in a display of superhuman strength that left her awestruck. Pushing her behind it and using his own body to shield her further, he fired at the crowd. Civilians and soldiers alike fled in panic.
New firing broke out from the side of the stage, aimed at the soldiers shooting at Pierce. Whit and the others had commandeered their dead guards’ weapons and had taken cover behind the fire curtain’s control box, which was now raining plumes of sparks and smoke. Pierce stood over Callie, taking hit after hit, and firing as if nothing was happening. But he was bleeding now. The wounds closed quickly enough, but clearly his invulnerability was fading.
Then his weapon’s beam turned purplish pink. Paled. Sputtered. He looked down, surprised, then dove behind the table as his enemies quickly took advantage. Blue fire danced off the stone, filling the air with a fine vibration. And stopped.
Crouching with Pierce behind the table, Callie looked into the gun barrels of four huge guards. The nearest guard reached for her, then staggered back as the floor lurched. She heard a low rumble as the other guards looked around in alarm and people started screaming. Down the hall toward the open doorway, she saw the floor undulate like an oily black sea, and the rocking intensified, bouncing her hard against the tile. The fire curtain’s poles whipped back and forth, spewing sparks as plaster chunks rained from the ceiling. To the right a pillar cracked with a boom, half of it peeling away to fall on screaming, fleeing Splagnosians. Thinking she needed to get under a doorway, Callie pushed herself to her feet, only to be thrown back into Pierce. He pulled her close as rocks pelted them, and another pillar gave way, thundering down the length of the hall. She clung to him as the ground churned and the dust thickened and the ceiling came down around them. It seemed the awful roar would never stop, that the floor would never stop rocking, that surely they would be crushed at any moment.