Page 22 of Cage of Starlight

Vantaras lifts a finger, and the guards are ready to jump into action, but Helner raises her own hand.

“Ah, but Lieutenant, you forget that I have eyes. The other day, when you brought this feisty little thing to me for his Core, I was watching you. Do you think your colonel would like to hear what I saw then? Because I think he’d be fascinated to learn how — ”

Vantaras starts walking. “What do you want?”

Tory forces his legs to cooperate. It’s so much harder to put them into motion after a moment of pause. Nausea is slick in his belly, his vision growing gray as the sky overhead.

“You know what I want, Sena.”

The soldiers’ boots echo on the floor like gunshots, counting out the moments between Helner’s words and Vantaras’ answer. “I do not.”

“I need you to arrange me some time with the Channeler. There’s something I want to try with him.”

Vantaras sounds disgusted. “There’s always something you want to try.”

“I’ve put a lot of thought into it, and your report about what happened in Hulven corroborates my theories. If the Channeler can handle every energy, he should be able to control captured Legion units. He’s the answer. I know he is.”

“If you’re coming to me, it means you’ve failed to get permission from Colonel Kirlov or the general. It’s not my place to offer what they’ve denied you.”

Tory bites his tongue as they walk. If he had the energy for it, he’d say I’m right here , or maybe I’m not a token to be bartered, but all his energy goes to keeping his feet underneath him, so he imagines chewing through both their throats at once instead.

Helner says sweetly, “Please recall that I can have a delightful conversation with Kirlov this evening if you don’t accommodate this simple, reasonable request of mine, Lieutenant.”

Vantaras’ footsteps falter.

“I’m asking for a tiny favor. You’ll arrange it, won’t you?”

His fists clench so hard the bones creak. “. . . I’ll arrange it.”

“Wonderful!” She’s already walking backward, stepping out of sight of the group and fading down the hall. “And make sure—”

Vantaras paces ahead so fast they’re too far away to catch whatever comes next.

He stops the group, at last, in front of an unlabeled room, its door flanked by two soldiers. He knocks.

“Enter,” calls a hollow voice from inside.

The whole group, minus Tory, seems to steel themselves, but Vantaras turns to the soldiers behind him. “You’re dismissed. I’ll be in contact if I have questions.”

They don’t literally sigh, but their bodies are sighs in motion as they sketch salutes and retreat like their asses are on fire, leaving Tory with an empty hall behind him and no strength to flee down it.

With a nod to the impassive soldiers flanking the door, Vantaras gestures for Tory to go inside. Glaring, he obeys.

The door closes behind them.

The lights in the hallways were bright enough, but they’re blinding in here.

The room is wide and mostly empty, windowless aside from three of those narrow, bar-like windows.

It looks like an empty lab of some sort, and Tory wonders if Kirlov chose it for the counter that stands like an island between them. He takes Tory in, expressionless.

“Your supervisee nearly got away from us, Lieutenant.”

Vantaras stands bone-crackingly straight. “Yes, Sir. He made it as far as Serpentshead.”

It hits Tory only then that he hasn’t mentioned Belmin or his Seeds.

He assumed, earlier, that letting them go was part of some larger plot on Sena’s part, just like he cleared space in the doorway for a second before Tory’s Core was installed—a predator taunting its prey with freedom before trapping it between its teeth again.

But Helner said something was up with that , too, didn’t she?

Tory grits his teeth. He’s too tired for this.

Vantaras keeps talking, tone steady and dry.

“Private Jemmes informed me at the gate that Menden and three guards are recovering with the Healers.”

“I’m aware.”

A person should not be able to stand more at attention when they’re already doing so, but Vantaras somehow manages it. “I accept responsibility. Arknett’s actions are as mine.”

Tory wants to bite him. Throw him out a window.

A research subject for Helner, and now not even his choices are his own.

He was so close. To Arlune. To freedom, and people who could show him how to fight to keep it.

“Do you bastards even hear yourselves?” he blurts, and the way Kirlov’s eyes narrow makes him think this was a bad choice, but he’s already taking a short step forward and can’t stop himself mid-stride.

Or perhaps he can. His foot, when it lands on the floor, finally gives up its token effort to keep him standing, and he lands hard on one knee.

At least it takes those icepick eyes off of him and turns them on Vantaras. “Lieutenant, you injured him?”

“No, Sir. I believe it’s exhaustion. I was hoping to deliver him to the Healers . . .”

“Do it. I expect you’ll make it absolutely clear what will happen if he continues to act in this way. You are lucky you managed to recapture him so quickly. The Grand General will be visiting tomorrow, and if he were to see the Channeler in anything but pristine condition . . .”

“My fa—” Vantaras’ hands fly behind his back, clasping each other so tight Tory’s surprised something doesn’t break. He shakes himself, paces to the door, and opens it. “Please escort Mr. Arknett to the Healers.”

Tory isn’t sure he’s going to be escorted anywhere. Now that he’s no longer putting weight on them, his legs have gone like jelly. Two apathetic soldiers enter to drag him out.

He hears, just before the door closes, “The Grand General will be coming here ?”

*

He isn’t sure how much time has passed when the infirmary door opens, searing Tory’s aching eyes. Vantaras steps inside to whisper with the nurse, his face beaded with sweat and gait uneven.

Tory’s lips curl.

The room is barren, just a nurse, the bed with straps looped around one wrist because he’s a flight risk , and the blue-toned strips of lighting along the wall that paint the room in calming underwater colors.

Relaxing colors, the young man who healed him said, while Tory nearly dozed at the euphoric rush of warmth as his tired, torn muscles repaired themselves.

Relaxing colors.

The darkness in the caravan with Hasra had the same muffled quality, but all Tory can remember is that gloved hand wrenching the door open. Hasra’s eyes as she watched him go.

He’s got energy, now, to feel all the shame and rage he was too drained for, earlier.

At the sight of Sena Vantaras, Tory burns.

Vantaras sucks in a breath, shallow and erratic.

The heels of his shoes tick on the floor as he approaches Tory.

“Forgive me for the delay.” A demand, not a request. “I made the grave mistake of not explaining the full function of your Core the moment you received it. Naively, having never had supervisees before, I believed it would be merciful to allow you a few short days to acclimate to STAR-7 before making you aware of the breadth of the control it has over you, but I failed to take into account your stupidity and recklessness. I won’t make the same mistake twice. ”

Tory scoffs. “You, merciful ?”

Vantaras doesn’t take the bait. He’s never met Tory’s eyes so steadily before. Even in the relaxing light of the infirmary, they’re molten golden-brown. Tory aches to look away but refuses to give Vantaras the pleasure.

“You might recall that the thing implanted in your neck is a tracker.”

Tory flinches.

“That’s not its only function. What I failed to mention before is that it’s a sort of lit fuse—stellite-powered, so your Seed energies sustain the very device that imprisons you and can kill you if you step out of line.”

“What?”

“As I explained before, the matching compass in the Monitor Room, having been fed a drop of your blood and thus a sample of the Seed that powers your Core, resonates with the Core inside you and can be used to hunt you, which accounts for the tracking and identification features. But they thought it would be funnier still if the Core literally took root inside Seeds, so they employed an altered version of a vine that responds to stellite. Any attempt to remove the tracker will result in the roots it has spread in your body breaking off and remaining behind. Those roots produce an extraordinarily toxic compound when they decay, poisoning your blood and killing you.”

Tory swallows, body tingling with cold. A frenzied rush in his ears mutes the noise of his breath and dyes the dim world darker. Maybe he really is underwater. His hand goes to his shoulder where his Core was planted.

“If you escape, they will track you with it to find you. You die if you take it out, so they will find you.”

“Stop.”

Vantaras does not stop. “If for whatever reason they cannot reach you, they can disable it remotely using your compass. The Core’s decaying roots will kill you, but the decay of the Core itself will kill you far faster.

It’s a graceless, agonizing death. If you leave without permission or fail to maintain regular contact while performing an authorized mission and they judge the risk of your capture or escape higher than your use to them, they may disable your Core.

Your only choice—the single choice remaining to you—is to do exactly as they ask of you until you die or they kill you.

You cannot escape, Mr. Arknett. The second the Core was placed in your body, you signed over everything you are to the Vantaras family. ”

Tory laughs to cover the other sound that wants to escape him. “You have one, too?”

“Of course. As you’ve observed, I am also a Seed.”

“Even your big connections couldn’t get you a pass?”

Vantaras chuckles, low and cold. “Had my father compromised for his own son, what would others have said?” He turns away, baring the long scar on his neck. “Do not try something like this again. There are worse things than the Core. You don’t want to find out what they are.”

Tory knows walls. He’s beaten his hands bloody against so many.

This is something infinitely more terrible.

Walls can be climbed or burned or broken down.

Some of them, like the ones in Hulven, are silly things.

From far enough away, any wall is laughable.

His Core, though, is like the tattoo on his arm—a prison he carries with him.

Tory stares at his blankets. The implantation site for his Core stopped hurting shortly after it was installed. He wants to pinch it, prod it, make it bleed or burn—make it announce itself for what it is.

Vantaras’ gloved fingers rasp at the material of his uniform slacks in quick, precise circles.

“This incident has been noted on your record. Security won’t increase for you this time, but make no mistake.

They’re looking for excuses to put you further under their thumb.

As a Worldseed, you already have the generals’ attention.

It’s unwise to give them reason to look closer.

If you try to escape again, especially if you make as much of a scene as you did this time, they might decide you need a NOVA. ”

“You keep saying they ,” Tory hisses.

“Pardon me?”

“ They may disable my Core, they’re looking for excuses. They might decide. You’re one of them.”

“Is that what you think?” Vantaras scoffs, one gloved hand skimming the back of his neck. “You’re wrong.”

“I doubt it. You know, you keep giving me all this advice, Lieutenant Vantaras .”

Vantaras flinches.

“‘Don’t make trouble, don’t invite attention, don’t make them hurt you.’ All these rules to make me a smaller target, a perfect little soldier. When do you—do any of you—tell them to stop hurting us ?”

Vantaras stands there, wordless and stricken. “I—”

His mouth snaps closed and he turns to go without a word.

“That’s what I thought,” Tory spits at the door that slams closed behind him.