Page 14 of Cage of Starlight

CHAPTER SEVEN

W atching water balloons barrel toward people and being in the middle of the fray when it’s happening prove to be two entirely different things. After a brief break, Vantaras directs Tory to enter the yard and settles in beside Menden.

Figures the bastard would stick around to watch him suffer.

As promised, Menden has the others move in close, the wall-mounted cannons aimed steeply downward. Only two cannons lob the balloons farther out.

“These’ll have sort of a lazy arc to them,” Menden says. “It’s the easiest they’ll ever be for you. Good luck!”

That’s all he gets before the cannons open fire, eerily precise.

“Stellite targeting system,” Menden chirps as Tory barely avoids a balloon barreling toward his face. “Precision at its finest; stellite is drawn to almost every flavor of Seed energy, so you can’t run from it. It’ll just follow you!”

Tory trips to the left to avoid a projectile.

“Don’t dodge them, fool boy! Stop them.”

“I don’t know how!”

“Well, then. Carry on!”

Vantaras leans back against a tree, arms crossed.

One to the shoulder doubles Tory over, choking and gasping.

For an instant, with the force of the blow, the water feels hot.

It’s freezing. Another explodes against his thigh with the tissue-deep throb of a nascent bruise.

Tory reflexively lifts his hands and closes his eyes, but it’s useless. This is nothing like healing.

Tory lurches toward Menden, grabbing his shoulders and steering him toward the cannons. Precision indeed. The cannons follow Tory even with Menden as a human shield between them. “Tell me what to do !”

A projectile barely misses them, and Menden issues a shriek that tapers into high-pitched laughter.

“Harness it! You—if you let yourself, you can feel the energies. You especially should be able to feel them. Regular CFR Seeds work based on sight alone—simple recognition and transference of energy. You’re a Channeler , and the world is made of energies.

If the old records are right, you should be able to handle them all, which means you can—” they duck away from a balloon that would have nailed Menden in the face “—certainly handle the energies that drive these!” Another balloon splatters a foot away from them.

“These things? Plain old kinetic energy. When you’ve improved, we’ll have Kineticists accelerate a slew of projectiles at you so you can get practice redirecting natural and Seed-enhanced energies! ”

They skitter back as two more balloons drive into the grass, spitting water up Tory’s ankles. He closes his eyes, but there’s nothing to harness . Just a biting wind and his body begging him for rest. “Seed enhanced? A slew ?”

“Oh, yes! You’ll be a great asset on the battlefield. See, the Arlunian soldiers—”

Tory drags them left.

“ Merciless . Every weapon they use is Seed-modified—made faster, more powerful, more lethal.” Menden skips them back, far too graceful. “This is terribly inefficient, Tory, please. Anyway, I’m sure you’ve heard what they call this unit.”

Seedbait. The Corpse Corps .

“We’ve had no Seeds capable of redirecting Seed-modified attacks before you, and our enemy knows it.

CFR Seeds cannot handle the volume of energy that you can.

We’ve had to trust our Fielders’ shields to repel the weapons they fail to stop—and they fail to stop a lot!

They don’t have the Channeler’s rumored ability to discern energies and can only affect what they can see, so by the time the attacks get close enough to stop, they’re also close enough to cause damage when they fall, which in turn leaves far too heavy a burden on our Fielders.

With Seed-enhanced weaponry hitting them from all directions, it’s only a matter of time until their forcefields fail.

” Menden runs them ahead of the next balloon.

“But if you can do what we expect you can, you could single-handedly free the Fielders from that burden by redirecting massive volumes of both kinetic and Seed-directed attacks. Better still, you won’t tire as quickly.

Handling different flavors of energy should theoretically be like using different muscles—you’ll have both wider range and greater stamina.

Fewer fatalities, more opportunities to mount an offensive.

” Menden laughs. “You could change everything!”

“That’s bullshit!”

He pushes Menden away and runs backward. The unblinking eye of the cannon follows him, belting balloons that nip at his heels. He tries to do what Menden told him. Sense the energy. It’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard.

The water makes sludge of the ground and slicks down the yellowing grass. Someone up ahead gets pounded in the chest with a full-speed projectile. The cold wind freezes Tory and locks his muscles. It’s useless. There’s no energy that sings to him, nothing for Tory to hold onto.

“If I may.” Vantaras’ cool voice rises from Tory’s right. He strides onto the field like it’s nothing—dry and warm in his tailored uniform. The cannon angles away as he enters the field. He must be wearing something that stops it.

If Tory could see straight, he could steal the thing. Instead, he shivers, doubled over and gasping, when those perfect, polished boots stop in front of him. He glares up, soaked to his skin, and whips wet hair from his eyes. “W-what . . . do you want?”

“This is painful to watch.”

“Then stop watching. ”

“I’ve been ordered to observe.”

“And you’re s-such a good little soldier.”

Vantaras’ lips thin. Direct hit.

It feels good, being on more equal ground. “You listen to everything that guy tells you? Come, sit, stay ?”

Something burns in Vantaras’ fire-bright eyes. He pulls a kerchief from the front pocket of his uniform. Rich blue-green, it catches the stormy gray light with a low shine, like it’s silk or something. Snob.

Carefully, he folds it—maybe two inches wide—over and over itself.

Tory’s stomach flips, brain registering too late what he plans to do. “What are you—?”

Vantaras’ lips twist up in a vengeful expression quite unlike a smile. He shifts behind Tory, and before Tory can make his cold-clumsy limbs move, Vantaras has pulled the cloth over his eyes and knotted it behind his head. A landscape of perfect darkness spreads out.

Vantaras says, “I think you should try it like this.”

Tory reaches up to tear off the kerchief.

“I’ll rephrase.” The voice comes now from Tory’s right side, low and cold. “You will do it like this. I don’t believe you’ll like what happens if you remove the blindfold.”

Tory spits in his direction, but he can’t know if he hits his mark.

He does, however, know the moment Vantaras leaves.

There’s a distant whine as the cannons recalibrate, and the barrage continues.

Tory hears a whistling whoosh an instant before all breath is wrenched from his chest and he falls back into the mud.

He inhales water and chokes it up, shuddering as he forces himself onto his knees.

Tory will let this petty punishment slide. He’ll play at docility for now—and only for now—so Vantaras won’t see it when Tory comes for him.

After a while, it’s not so bad. If he listens for the whistle of their passage, he can dodge the balloons well enough. Most times, anyway. One nails his knee, and agony stabs through him, sharper than the dull gongs of cold. He staggers.

“Try harder!” Vantaras calls.

It’s like the deal he made in Hulven for healing.

He can do nothing but agree, without even the freedom to negotiate the terms of his surrender.

The ache all through him feels like the pain after a healing, too.

He misses everything he used to have, and he hates that he misses it, because healing hurt and Hulven, too, was a prison—and he a fool for willingly remaining in it—but it was better than this.

One or two fewer walls, wind charms, and prayers to dispel the choking fuel fog.

Two mugs of steaming tea on the table: the fumbling care of a man who could not fix Tory but tried.

Warm arms and the sting of pipe smoke in his nose.

His foot twists in a rut and he’s on the ground, splayed hands sinking into frigid water.

Healing. When he’s healing , he finds the energies just fine.

The low electric rhythm of a body at work, the warm pool of possibility he can focus and direct toward closing wounds, urging the body to recall and return to a state pre-injury.

He knows, intimately, the struggle to direct that last fizzling wisp to the work of restoration.

He doesn’t know this. He doesn’t belong here.

He finds his feet in time for a balloon to pummel him in the gut, wrenching a shameful noise from him and suffusing him with sick, visceral pain.

Menden’s voice: “Lieutenant, that’s enough .”

“Not nearly, sir.”

“That wasn’t a request, boy, it was an order!”

“On what authority? You’re so fond of reminding me that you’re retired. He is my supervisee, Mr. Menden.”

Bent double, Tory coughs until his ears ring, until the roar of his pulse swallows sight and sound. Something explodes against his shoulder, knocking him onto his side in the mud.

“Up, Arknett! We’re not finished.”

Rage. The heat of it clears his head of exhaustion and pain. When his senses lash out, hunting for Vantaras, he finds something else.

In the dark, awareness trickles in. Something trails after the rush of the balloons in the air: a presence with all the blunt-force heft of a rock to the chest.

The dark. Sight was a distraction when he first started healing, too. When he was young, he’d always close his eyes.

These energies are nothing like the wild-warm pulse of life. They’re destructive, without intention.

No wonder he couldn’t find them before.