Page 44 of Cage of Starlight

CHAPTER TWENTY

R iese’s tent is not nearly as big as Kirlov’s was, but it’s big enough for a makeshift table strewn with maps and pages of notes.

Tory can’t let himself focus on them. “Hulven,” he says as soon as they’re inside.

“Yes. It was our half of the exchange with Arlune.” Riese settles onto an overturned box and gestures for Tory to do the same. He grins with his sharp canines. “But it wasn’t just about the exchange. It was about splitting their attention.”

“Their attention?”

“The Box is always well guarded. Stocked with Seeds and soldiers, constantly patrolled. Naturally. It’s the heart of Vantaras’ war effort.

Close enough to the border to easily deploy Seeds.

Far enough that no one can easily invade.

The walls are impregnable, and, as we learned when we tried ’porting in with Travin, only Seeds with Cores can travel freely within the facility without setting off the alarms, which threw a wrench in our impromptu invasion plans.

But Vantaras is making anti-Seed weaponry now .

Once it’s widespread, it’ll be harder than ever to make headway.

We had to act fast. Our thefts along the supply routes, in addition to keeping us cozy, mean the military is looking for enemies outside their walls rather than inside, and they’re sending every spare trainee to guard the routes.

The stellite theft serves two purposes, as well.

It’ll allow Arlune to keep its populace alive and create more Legion units, but it means those Box bastards are also looking at Hulven, spreading themselves ever thinner. ”

“Clever,” Tory allows.

“And effective. We’ve asked Arlune to increase their aggression at the border to draw soldiers and attention away from the Compound, too.”

Tory remembers the infirmary that day during training, the blood beneath the Healer’s nails and between the floor tiles. Increased aggression, indeed. “. . . You slaughtered them.”

Riese lifts a shoulder. “It wasn’t part of our instructions, but yes. I believe what happened to your unit was also part of our efforts. For what it’s worth, I’m glad you survived.”

“All those Seeds—” Randall, Niela, they didn’t choose that.

“Don’t let the details turn your eyes from the truth: Vantaras started this war and fanned its flames.

He’s the one feeding the bodies of his people into it to maintain power.

I’m here to end it, and ending a war is no more beautiful than starting one.

Blood paves the path to every bargaining table.

I’m sorry about your unit, but I knew the sharp ones would survive.

I was right; here you are. You know what all survivors know: with grit and sufficient desperation, anything is possible.

It’s why you’ll be the one to end this.”

He makes it sound so simple, like Tory was made for this. Like all the blood he’s shed and the words he’s swallowed and the scars he’s borne have meaning . Warmth fills Tory, slick and spreading, like oil waiting for flame.

Sufficient desperation. Tory has that in spades. “How do you know?”

Riese closes a hand around Tory’s arm, right where the tattoo rests. “Because of this.”

Tory pulls back. “What?”

Riese rolls up the sleeve of his own sweater. On his upper arm, vital and sharp-edged, is a red tattoo. Just like his mother’s: the mark of a convicted criminal.

Tory’s reaching for it before he thinks twice. He pulls back before touching.

“It’s okay,” Riese says. “Go ahead.”

His fingers trace the warm skin. “I’ve never seen one like this.

Outside, I mean.” He met a woman in the illegal House he worked in as a boy, bought out of the camps as an infant by her aunt.

The only tattoos he’s seen were like hers: blue tattoos denoting a prison-born child with an intricate design in purple to show they’d been pardoned.

He’s never met an escapee like himself, without the pardoning mark, and not once in his life has he ever seen a red one, freed.

All Riese’s wild claims seem suddenly, terrifyingly possible.

“We’re rare breeds, the two of us,” Riese says. “I refused to let them keep me. Clearly you felt the same.”

Tory can’t tear his eyes away. “What happened?”

“I was on one of Vantaras’ think tanks, if you’d believe it.

I was a poor kid from the Northeast—little mining town.

Coal, not stellite. But I was smart, and I knew Vantaras values smarts.

He and his geniuses had already made their first steam engine, but I studied mechanical engineering at university and argued in my thesis that if stellite could stably store power for the Arlunians, we could work miracles with it if we could get it to do the same for us.

I was put on a special committee to see if we could do just that.

And the strides we made. There was a woman, a few years younger than me, still the most brilliant person I’ve ever met.

We stayed over at each other’s houses, ate leftovers, didn’t sleep.

She’d start a thought and I’d finish it.

The first time Vantaras got stellite to store energy? That was us . We made that happen.”

Tory thinks of the stellite in the Compound, brittle and dead from whatever they had to do to make it work, and winces.

Riese echoes the expression. “Yeah. See, after a while, things started falling into place for me. I’d gotten so caught up in the theory of it that I failed to consider the implications.

When I realized that the energy the Grand General wanted to put in the stellite was Seed energy, for the purposes of tracking and identification .

. . I was already too far along. I went to the woman I’d come to love and shared my fears with her.

Naturally, she’d guessed the truth years ago, sharp thing.

She must have reported me as a seditionist—not as a Seed, I wasn’t fool enough to tell her that —because she gave me tea after hearing my worries, and when I woke, I was in the camps—a mining camp, like she knew it’d sting the worst—and they’d already marked me. ” He taps the tattoo.

“I realized it then, and you’ll learn it the hard way, too, if you don’t wise up now: love is dangerous.

Being free, being a leader means freeing ourselves from the blinkering feelings that would let people hurt us.

Lie to yourself all you want, but none of us can protect more than our hands can hold.

Believe me, I tried. When I first established this group, I had such grand goals.

I turned over supply shipments. I freed a whole wagonful of conscripted Seeds like you.

I grew the group, made us a force to be reckoned with.

” He bares his palms to Tory. “But it was more than I could handle. Iri’s father paid the price for that.

He was a Reader—he could identify Seeds at a glance.

An incredibly rare and valuable Seed type.

If he were ever captured, that bastard Vantaras could have turned him on all of us.

Could have tried, at least. He would rather have died.

He was good . But one of our new inductees panicked, thought it would be safer if Iri’s father was dead so Vantaras could never use him.

” Riese grits his teeth. “I learned my lesson then. I’ve kept my group smaller ever since.

” He turns Tory’s hands to show the scarred palms. “Learn from my mistake. Think hard about what you can’t let go of.

That lapdog officer of yours, you’ll realize he doesn’t make the cut, either now or when he betrays you. ”

Something flips in Tory’s belly, and the warmth from Riese’s confidence wars with the chill spreading from his stomach. He scans the tent, looking for a distraction.

His eyes land on a roll of blue grid paper. He recognizes the blueprints of the Compound immediately, its soft hexagonal shape covered with notes in black ink. Archives, one note reads. Another one says Officers’ Quarters. At least half the rooms have labels.

Tory has done enough late-night wandering while staying out of Gavin’s way that he could put names to at least half of the empty spaces. The room between Archives and Intake is a closet stocked with cleaning supplies where the night janitor likes to light up a pipe.

Riese clears his throat.

Tory’s eyes jerk up to meet his.

“It’s all right. We have nothing to hide.

This is why I brought you here. We need you.

We’ve been gathering intelligence for years, but Vantaras’ anti-Seed prototypes messed everything up.

Some things we hadn’t expected to need to do for months , but if we want to get out ahead of these weapons he’s making, we need to act now.

We were desperate. Then you came along, like the stars led you here. ”

“Why me?”

“You’ll know everything soon. I like you, Tory, but I hope you understand now why I’m more careful about who I trust.”

Tory squeezes his fist until his knuckles creak and remembers Sena’s parting words. “You want me to show you can trust me?” He says, mock-casual. “I can get weapons for you. Tons of them—more than you could ever use.”

Riese’s gaze sharpens. “What are you proposing?”

Tory swallows. “Scavenging. The little massacre you arranged? There are tons of bodies on the cliffs. All of them will be armed.”

“Except the side effect of our work on the border is that Vantaras has this area crawling with people. Our scouts came back this morning with news that there are soldiers on the fringes of the woods. We don’t have anything near the firepower they’ll be packing. It’s too risky.”

Tory leans over the maps, fingernails biting his palms. “You would have the firepower if you took the risk.” And if soldiers are trawling the woods, that means someone will be in range of a communicator.

They can get in contact, buy themselves breathing room.

Win-win. “What did you call it? Sufficient desperation?”

“Wisdom is important, too. We have time.”