The Last Days of Lorien (6 page)

Not that I cared.

“What
is it
about a man in a dress?”

I had become so absorbed in my work that the unexpected voice sent my heart leaping into my throat. I knew exactly who it was without even looking down.

I looked down anyway.

The electric-white wig had been replaced by a brunette pageboy; she was now wearing a simple red dress with a short flared skirt. The dress, along with the hair, was covered in white, irregular polka dots.

I don’t even know how you get polka dots in your hair. Was that another of Devektra’s Legacies? Honestly, with her, nothing would surprise me.

“Hey,” I said, the word coming out of my throat in an awkward croak.

She looked up at me with a pursed-lip smile, shielding her eyes from the suns. “Never figured you for the Munis apprentice-type.”

“LDA, actually,” I said, determined to hide my embarrassment.
“Engineering trainee.” Then, realizing what a dork I sounded like, I added, “I’m just in it for the tunic.”

She let out a lilting, genuine laugh. “You actually don’t look bad in it,” she said. “I just don’t see why you guys wear those dumb pajama pants underneath. What’s the point of wearing a dress unless it’s to show off your legs?”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever seen my legs,” I said, and then turned back to my work. Today was not the day that I was in the mood to be made fun of by the world’s hottest girl.

To my surprise, though, Devektra didn’t leave. “What exactly are you doing up there anyway?” she asked. “I’ve always wondered what those poles were for.”

“It’s the grid.” I didn’t want to humor her ditzy act. Everyone knew what the grid was. Most of them chose not to care.

“The grid,” she said. “So I guess you’re one of those people who believes in all that stuff?”

“What do you mean by ‘that stuff’?”

“Great Elder Prophecy, threat to Lorien, eternal vigilance, blah blah blah. Aliens are going to land tomorrow and take us all back to their home planet to clean their toilets unless you fix that box up there right this second!”

I thought for a second. No, I wasn’t one of
those people.
Obviously. Considering that it was basically what I’d been saying to Rapp all week, I was surprised to find myself resisting her interpretation. Instead of laughing along with her, I bit my tongue, replaced the last of the faulty wires and closed the front of the control panel before gearing up to make my descent back to the ground.

Devektra made no motion to leave.

“Don’t you have a show to prepare for?” I asked.

“Nah,” she said, leaning against the entrance and staring at me with a tough, inscrutable smile. “I just came here for a fitting. I’m not playing again ‘til the Quartermoon.”

“Ah,” I said, throwing the kit over my shoulder.

“You should come,” she said.

I looked up, surprised by the offer and wondered if she was pulling my leg. She
had
been making fun of me this whole time, right?

Her smile widened. It was like she knew the effect she had on me.

Of course she knows
, I remembered, kicking myself.
She can read my mind.

She winked, turned, and walked away without another word. I just dangled there, hanging dumbly from my dumb pole.

Even if she’d been serious, which I wasn’t so sure about—being a mind reader must have its perks—there was no way I’d ever be able to take her up on the invitation. I wasn’t allowed to leave the LDA campus after dark, for one, and plus, I’d never be able to get into the Chimæra after the debacle of last time.

Of course, Devektra knew all those things. I’d
almost
let myself believe she was for real.

CHAPTER 7

When I reached the bottom of Eilon’s Hill, I found Rapp locked in serious-looking conversation with a Mentor Cêpan I’d never met before.

“This is Daxin.” Rapp introduced me as I approached. The guy didn’t seem all that interested in meeting me, but I waved a halfhearted greeting anyway. He ignored it.

“I need to commandeer your transport for the rest of the day,” said Daxin. “Something’s come up and I don’t have time to get back to LDA.”

“Sure,” I said, shrugging. “Take it. We’ll just finish our grid maintenance on foot and then walk back after.” I was annoyed by the prospect of the long walk back to the academy, but wasn’t going to let them see it.

“He can’t take the Egg without one of us,” explained Rapp. “We’re the ones programmed on today’s manifest; the ignition won’t start unless one of us is at the wheel.”

Apparently feeling the situation had been sufficiently explained, Daxin made his way to the Egg and hopped into the passenger seat. Rapp seemed to sense my confusion. “I volunteered you to accompany him.”

“Why me and not you?” I wouldn’t admit it to Rapp, but I was bummed. I had actually been starting to enjoy my grid repair work.

“Because we’ve still got five sectors and eight patches to cover, and my completion rate is faster than yours.”

I balked. “No, I did one and you did one—”

Rapp interrupted me. “I’ve done
three
. I just came back to retrieve the Egg and that’s when I saw Daxin.”

He’d finished
three
? Had I really been that slow? I was going to have to start actually paying attention in my classes if I didn’t want to look like an idiot.

“This way we may still stand a chance of getting through our list by day’s end.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling strangely disappointed.

“There’ll be other grid maintenance days,” said Rapp.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. Next time I’ll be faster.”

I left him and climbed into the Egg. I’d driven it around the LDA’s campus before, but this was my first time piloting it for real, and I felt a funny surge of excitement. I mean, it’s not the biggest thing to pilot it since it does most of the work on its own, but still. It’s a big flying egg, what’s not fun about that?

The doors closed behind me with a whoosh.

It was only once I took my seat that I became aware of the weird vibe Daxin was giving off. He was urgent and fidgety, and I was pretty sure I saw a line of sweat forming on his brow.

“Where to?” I asked.

“We’re going out west of the Malkan Kabarak,” he said. “You can just tell the Egg to stop there. We’ll cover the rest of the distance on foot.”

I spoke our coordinates into the receiver and the Egg took off, out of the city. It picked up speed once it breeched the city limits.

Unnerved by the way Daxin was drumming his leg and glancing around nervously, I stared straight ahead at the scenery whizzing by without speaking. The dusty plains ringing the city gave way to the increasingly lush vegetation of the rest of Lorien. I’d spent so little time outside the city it was a shock to be reminded how
green
the vast majority of our planet was.

The slab of violet light kept coming into view over the tops of the trees. “Elders went all out this year,” I said, idly trying to make conversation with Daxin.

He didn’t respond.

“The Herald?” I said, pointing out the window. “Must have taken them at least a month to cook that one up.”

Daxin shifted uneasily in his seat, avoiding my gaze.

“Yeah,” he said.

“What?” I asked. I didn’t like the vibe I was picking up from him. And I’d never even seen him before. But Rapp knew who he was, so I had no reason not to trust the guy.

“Nothing,” he said. “We just don’t know that it
is
a Herald.”

Mysteriousness
and
ominousness. Great.

“What are you saying?” I pressed.

“The Elders have been off-planet for a while, and they’ve been out of communication the past few days.”

I couldn’t figure out what he was getting at. “Yeah, but that’s nothing, right? I thought they were off-planet a lot. Don’t they spend a lot of time doing all kinds of Elder stuff that we could never understand?”

“Sure,” he said. But he sounded skeptical. Then something occurred to me.

“Does this have anything to do with why my engineering class was cancelled today?”

Daxin did a double take. I had clearly guessed right.

“Orkun and a few councilmembers made a trip to the column,” he admitted. “To scope it out, investigate. It’s probably nothing.”

“Why are you so concerned? If the light isn’t a Herald, what do you think it is?”

“Look, don’t worry about it, all right? I’ve just had a long day.”

I sunk back into my seat, slightly annoyed. Just days ago I hadn’t cared one way or another about the backstage goings-on among the council, the Mentor Cêpans and the other figures of the LDA, but now that I was actually showing some curiosity I was being told to mind my own business. It was frustrating.

The Egg cleared a few particularly dense acres of forest and came to a stop at the edge of the Malkan Kabarak. Daxin jumped out and immediately turned away from the perimeter fence, heading away from the settlement.

I jogged to keep up.

“Why are we walking? Why didn’t we just enter the coordinates in the first place, if you knew where we were going?”

Daxin answered without slowing down. “I’m here to meet a Garde. My Garde.”

Ah. If Daxin had only recently been promoted to a Mentor Cêpan, then maybe his testiness could be written off as mere nerves. A Mentor Cêpan’s first meeting with his Garde is a pretty big deal. The bond between a Mentor Cêpan and his Garde mentee is considered almost sacred—almost as strong as the bond between a parent and child. And it lasted for life, even after the Garde was grown up and no longer under the Cêpan’s direct tutelage. I could see how meeting someone you’re going to have that kind of relationship with could freak a person out.

Daxin kept talking as we made our way up the path. “Garde’s raised by his grandfather, and the grandfather lives this far out of the city for a reason. Hates technology, speedcraft. You know, still likes to do things the old way. I didn’t want to surprise him with the sound of the engine.”

Gradually, a small hut came into view up ahead, followed by a quickly approaching shape. It was racing right at us.

A Chimæra.

Before I knew what was happening, the Chimæra leapt off the ground and right into me, knocking me off my feet and onto my back.

The Chimæra had taken the form of some kind of grinning, oversized canine. Out came its huge dog tongue, scratchily enveloping my entire face. Within seconds, I was drenched.

Chimæra are pretty common on most of Lorien, but they mostly keep away from the city. I hadn’t been licked by one of the creatures since I was little, and I hadn’t enjoyed it even then.

“Byscoe! Byscoe! Down!” The animal immediately responded to the sound of its owner’s voice and obediently jumped off of me, then scooted down the road toward where the voice was coming from.

Daxin gave me a wry look as I stood and dusted myself off. A moment later, Byscoe had returned to us with his master, a grinning little boy dressed in a Garde’s distinctively fitted suit.

The boy’s skin and hair were messy, caked in red dust, the whites of his eyes and teeth blazing through the dirty mask of his face. He grabbed a tuft of Byscoe’s shag and swung himself up on top of the Chimæra with no fear at all. Lots of people out in the country were like this with the animals; they’d been raised with them. I still thought it was weird. Even when they took on cute, cuddly forms, it was hard to forget exactly how powerful they really were.

“Hi,” the kid said.

“Hi,” Daxin said awkwardly. I could tell he was unsure of what he was supposed to do next.

Just then, a burly man emerged from the hut down the road and walked towards us, in no hurry. Not quite as dirt-caked as the boy, he was roughly dressed in only loose canvas pants and a few strands of ceremonial necklaces. His skin was weathered, whipped dry and cracked by the outer winds.

“Hello,” he called out to us from a few paces away. “Is there something I can do for you?”

Daxin spoke. “Yes. We are from the Lorien Defense Council. I’ve been selected as your grandson’s Mentor.”

The man cocked his head. “A bit early. Boy’s got a few years left before LDA stewardship.”

“Grandpa?” asked the boy, still astride his Chimæra. His grandfather kept his eyes on Daxin, ignoring the boy.

Daxin seemed nervous, fumbling for something within the folds of his tunic.

“We need nothing from you at the present moment except your consent to give this to your boy.” He pulled out bracelet from within his tunic, pretty much the same as the government ID band I’d hacked a few weeks ago, but bigger. “A new security protocol, nothing more.”

I had no idea what he was talking about—the protocols for Garde and their Mentors weren’t something I’d studied at all—but I figured the LDC was doing some kind of tracking of young Garde.

The boy’s grandfather seemed reluctant, but the kid charged forward on Byscoe and snatched the band right from Daxin’s hand.
He whooped triumphantly from the top of his Chimæra and slid the band up his wrist all the way to his elbow, then raced off down the road, kicking up a cloud of red dust in his wake.

“He’s a spirited child,” the boy’s grandfather said. There was something a little sad about the way he said it, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

“He needs to keep the band on at all times.” Daxin seemed anxious about this point. I could read his worry. It was one thing for the boy to wear the band for fun, as part of a game, another thing altogether to ensure that he
continue
to wear it. Daxin needed the grandfather behind this. “It’s imperative.”

“I understand,” the man said. But it sort of sounded like he didn’t.

A few minutes later, we were back in the Egg, back in our seats. I waited for Daxin to give me our next set of coordinates. This whole day had been way too long already, not to mention way too weird. I found myself actually
wanting
to go back to the academy.

But for the moment, Daxin was quiet.

“Well?” I asked, finally. “Are we going home or what?”

Before he could answer, Daxin’s module beeped, and he looked down to read what it said. He grimaced and turned to me.