The Ophelia Prophecy (13 page)

“Do you think my mother knows the truth?” she murmured.

She did not expect the ship to answer, nor did she need it to. The question was naïve.

As for her father, that was more painful to contemplate—that he might have known and kept it from her. She could imagine her mother concealing such a thing—there were certain aspects of her mother’s work she had never been able to discuss with her family. But her father was honest to a fault. Especially when it came to Asha.

But he
would
lie to her, she knew, if he thought it would protect her.

Then it dawned on her: This could explain why she’d been taken. Maybe she had somehow learned the truth. It was the only plausible explanation that had occurred to her.

Fresh tears streamed down her cheeks. Miriam would preserve Sanctuary at any cost—what Pax had told Asha had only served as further confirmation. But give up her own daughter, her only child, to the Manti? Asha would never have believed it possible.

But everything she’d believed was a lie.

*   *   *

“Asha, the captain wants to see you on the bridge.”

She sat up, breathing and trying to reorient herself. She’d fallen asleep in the corridor—a full-system shutdown likely triggered by a subconscious impulse to preserve her sanity.

Rubbing her sore neck, she rose to her feet and went to find Pax.

As she stepped into the cockpit, a city came into view, spreading like a quilt over an arid valley, a river curving around one side. Something about it made her uneasy, and as they drew closer she realized what: nothing was moving. No people or vehicles in the streets. It was a ghost town, like Moab, near her home.

“Where are we?” she asked.

Pax rested against the console, gaze fixed on her rather than the breathtaking view.

“Nearly home. I’ll have to report to my father there, so we need to finish our interview. It’s in your best interests to tell me everything you remember.”

She walked to the copilot chair and sat down, before he could order her into it. “I’ve told you everything I remember,” she said stiffly. But inside she was on high alert. He’d warned her Banshee could read whether she was lying.

“The fact that your mother is on the governing council was a rather important detail. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I didn’t know it was important. I didn’t know about your…” She shifted her gaze to the window. “About your
agreement
.”

“I want you to tell me anything else you’ve remembered,” said Pax, “whether it seems important or not.” He was all business now. There was no threat in his tone, but nothing yielding, either.

“My mother is Miriam St. John,” she said. “Do you know her?”

Asha’s tone made this more of an accusation than a confession, but she saw she’d surprised him.
More
than surprised him—he looked troubled. “I know Councilwoman Miriam,” he said, “though not by her surname.”

She realized with some relief that if her mother had turned her over to the Manti, Pax would have some knowledge of it. Even if his memory had been damaged, surely his copilot would have been able to fill him in. Iris had been just as puzzled by her appearance as Pax.

“What else?” he pressed.

Asha shook her head, anxiety giving way to frustration. “I work in the Archive, and my father’s an archivist too. I told you that already. I’ve only been to the reservoir once before—it’s against the rules.” She hugged her arms over her chest. “I still don’t know why I was there, and staring at me like you want to shake me isn’t going to change that.”

Pax’s frown deepened. He bent toward her, and she flinched as he took hold of her hands, pressing the palm of her left hand against the console. She felt her fingers sink into Banshee, and the ship’s warm, vibrating caress. The other hand Pax kept, thumb pressed against the inside of her wrist.

Their gazes locked, and he said, “Do you intend to harm me or my family?”

She could feel her pulse pumping against his thumb, and knew that he could feel it too.

“No,” she replied.

She was less worried about Pax than Banshee, who no doubt had more sophisticated methods. But the ship remained silent. She didn’t have time to contemplate the two possibilities that suggested.

“Pax.” She curled her fingers in, tugging at her wrist, and he released her. “If there was any sort of plot against you, obviously it’s failed. It’s clear at this point I’m useless to you.”

He studied her without replying, and she continued, “You won’t take me back to Sanctuary because of what I know—you don’t want to expose your agreement with the council. And the others can’t go to Sanctuary if they aren’t human. Why not drop us all off together? Let us all start over someplace new. You’d never have to see any of us again.”

Pax was shaking his head before she’d finished. Her heart sank. “Even if I was willing to let you go without answers to my questions, I can’t release the others. Their DNA is pure.”

So they were human after all. She slumped against her chair. “What will you do with them?”

Pax sank down beside her with a sigh. “Our genetics lab manages our population of survivors. There’s a village, created specifically for pure DNA humans. They’ll be fed and sheltered. They’re more likely to survive there than anywhere else.”

Protected organic sources
. It was time to let go of trying to move the immoveable. The trip to Granada was inevitable at this point, for all of them. And while there may have been opportunity in Banshee’s protective impulses, she wasn’t going to have enough time for an attempt at undermining the ship’s loyalty.

She needed to start thinking about what came next.

“ETA in fifteen, Pax.” Iris’s voice sounded over the com. “Shall I radio our status?”

“Go ahead, Iris,” replied Pax. “We’ll see you there.”

He sat back in his chair, raising a hand to rub his forehead. “I don’t want you to be afraid,” he said.

She stared at his profile, surprised by both his words and his softened tone.

He dropped his hand and met her gaze. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

Her heart stuttered. “Why?”

“Because I’m not the monster you think I am.”

“I—” She shifted her gaze to the window. “I don’t think you’re a monster.”

“Do you think you can trust me?”

She hesitated. How could she tell him that something in her, a step below conscious thought, already did trust him? It wasn’t rational, or logical, or even sensible.

“I believe you don’t want to hurt me,” she said simply. “But once we reach Granada I wonder whether it will be within your power to protect me.” She clenched her hands together in her lap. “Or whether it will continue to be important to you.”

Silence stretched between them, and feeling his eyes still on her, she looked at him.

“Banshee,” he said, holding her gaze, “Asha risked her life to help Iris and me at Kylemore Abbey. I want your log to reflect that.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“I also want you to alter your log to say that Asha was picked up as a result of a relocation request from Sanctuary’s governing council.”

Asha’s mouth fell open.

“That would falsify the record, Captain.”

“Yes, Banshee,” confirmed Pax. “I’m asking you to falsify the record. Asha risked herself for Iris and me. I need you to alter the record to help me protect her when we reach the Alhambra.”

She thought about how she’d considered using Banshee’s weakness against Pax—and now he was exploiting that same weakness to
help
her. What was he risking for her? What if he was found out?

“I still need to get to the truth of this,” he told her. “But I’ll be better able to protect you if we can conceal the unusual circumstances. This is a reprieve, Asha. Depending on what we discover, I may have to go to my father with all of it.”

She nodded, afraid to hope he could pull it off.

“I’ve altered the record, Captain,” confirmed Banshee.

Realizing she’d stopped breathing sometime in the last two minutes, she let air fill her chest. “Will it be enough?” she asked Pax.

“Probably not.” He glanced down at the console. “Banshee?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Please also alter the record to show that Asha passed most of the trip alone with me in my quarters.”

She raised her eyebrows, heat flashing across her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” said Pax, avoiding meeting her look of surprise. “It gives me a motive for keeping you with me.”

She recalled Beck’s words back at the chapel:
If you’re with me, they’ll leave you alone.

This was the last thing she’d expected from him, and she was grateful, whatever the motive behind it. But she made a silent vow that as soon as she could, she’d find a way to free herself from the necessity of being protected by others.

DEBAJO

Pax changed the zoom on the view from the cockpit window, and the Alhambra came into focus. Most of the images Asha had seen of the palace had shown it washed in bright Spanish sun. Under the circumstances it was hard not to view the low-hanging clouds as ominous.

The structure looked more like a fortress from the air, mud-colored towers hugging the forested hillside, overlooking the sprawl of Granada below. But there were countless archive images attesting to the delicate beauty within. Meticulous gardens, still courtyard pools, and Moorish-flavored architecture. Columns, arches, fountains, and arabesques.

As they continued their approach, her eye picked out a number of towers that she’d never noticed in the photos she’d seen. Slender, organic spires—some membranous like Banshee and others more like honeycomb—protruding between the palace’s shorter towers and blocky buildings. Unlike the static architecture around them, they gradually changed color, their shifting palette including hues from the backdrop of cloud or the earthy tones of the fortress itself. The Manti, like the succession of conquerors before them, had left their mark on the place.

“Looks like a storm is coming,” she murmured, watching the upper portions of the spires transition between shades of blue, gray, and purple.

“It’s early for that,” replied Pax. “But maybe we’ll get a little rain.”

She let go of her visual focus, and the spires seemed to melt into their surroundings.

Wake, Ophelia
.

The ship, the sky, the captain—like the spires, they all faded to the background as the coded command relayed across her consciousness. The command and the view of the Alhambra were connected—the former had been triggered by the latter. There was no doubt in her mind about that. It had been her own idea.

And she understood everything now.

THE PREVIOUS MORNING

“Who is that?” asked Zee.

Asha shielded the afternoon sun with one hand, squinting down at the desert below. She could make out two figures—a tall man facing a raggedly dressed, shrill-voiced woman with silver hair hanging down her back in a tangled, ropey mass.

“Come on.” Zee rose from her seat. “Let’s check it out.”

Asha jumped up and followed her down the graceful slope of the sand-colored arch. Exploring the desert with Zee reminded her of old times, hiking among the monuments with her father. But old times were gone as of six months ago, when Asha’s father disappeared, and Zee approached her about joining a group that was planning to challenge the governing council.

Considering Asha’s mother was
on
the governing council, Zee had taken a risk in recruiting her. But Councilwoman Miriam had said nothing could be done to recover Asha’s father, and Asha hadn’t been able to forgive her for that. He was believed to have been picked up by a Manti patrol outside the bounds of Sanctuary. The fact it had happened to others before him didn’t make it easier to accept. And the fact Asha’s parents had lived apart for the last fifteen years didn’t make it easier to understand.

Asha stayed close to Zee as she crept around the boulders at the base of the arch, sun glinting off her platinum, pixie-cut hair. The disjointed tones they’d heard from above assembled into a meandering stream of words as they drew closer.

“… and the contamination will spread so fast you can’t contain it, authored by your idols whom you’ve held in contempt, and destroyed by your own hand, and you will not see it come, because every man is weak in the body and if that weakness shall spread to his heart he is infected, and defeated, and you more than the rest, yes, you more than the rest…”

Asha rose up on her toes, angling around Zee to get a better look at the speaker.

“… she will destroy you with arrows of fire…”

The old woman suddenly lifted her gaze and looked directly at Asha. The shock of recognition was so powerful that her body failed to respond to the impulse to shrink out of view.

“Ophelia,” whispered Asha, leaning against Zee’s back. “My god, that’s her—Stella Engle.”

“Sure is,” murmured Zee. She didn’t sound surprised, which struck Asha as odd considering everyone believed Engle was dead.

“… and you, Manti,” continued the old woman, “will embrace the angel whose fire will consume you and your house and her as well unless you loose her arrows into the sky…”

“Did you catch that?” asked Zee.

It had taken a moment to sink in after the first shock. But yes, she’d heard. Ophelia had called the man
Manti
.

Zee bent to pick up a rock and started around the base of the arch.

“What are you doing?” Asha whispered.

“Come on!” Zee took off at a run.

Ophelia launched at the stranger, and he was too busy fighting her off to notice Zee separating from the shadow of the monument.

The rock struck home with a nauseating thud—Zee could hit a rabbit from ten meters away. But before the man’s body hit the ground there was an explosion of motion. Something
ejected
from him: a fabric covering that encased and inflated. By the time they reached him, what had looked like fabric had hardened into something resembling an almond shell—oblong, pitted, and the same color as the sand. Shreds of the man’s clothing littered the ground around him.