Kevin McLaughlin
patreon
Chapter 163 - An Hourglass Filled With Sand
🕑 Added 2025-05-16 00:58:52 +0000 UTCBy noon the next day, all our preparations were well underway, and I decided it was well past time to pay Carver a visit. If he did know more than I did about what was going on, I needed to get that info from him. If he didn’t, that was even worse. I wanted to share the intel I’d gathered, along with my fears about what it meant.
Of all the other alliance leaders, I trusted Gideon Carver most. Maybe that was because I’d known him before the Event. But I thought there was more to it than that. Of all the other leaders, Gideon was the only one who’d consistently done things just because they were the right thing to do. He’d attacked those pirates on the coast because they were capturing refugees and turning them into slaves. He’d come to help me against Lyonius, even though there was no direct benefit to him. Sure, it took out a potential future threat for his people, but he could have found another way.
Turner was clearly working for his own benefit above all others, as was Eddings. I didn’t have a great read on General Jefferson yet, but since he was National Guard, I had a feeling he’d lean toward helping Turner.
My hope was that Gideon would have some ideas of how to deal with this mess, because I was fast running out. I hadn’t been truly serious about fleeing the area the night before, talking with Kara, but I had to admit that it was tempting sometimes. If I didn’t have all these people counting on me, then I might have already taken off.
I left everyone else at the Farm so I could make the best possible time on the trip. With just me aboard Sue, we could really cruise, and I wanted to get there, have the meeting, and still return before nightfall if possible. Kara, Alfred, Clay, and Patches would keep everyone motivated and working while I was away.
We sped down the road. Sue’s undead stamina let her keep the pace without trouble, while I held on for dear life. The last time I’d pushed the dinosaur this hard, it was when Kara was dying from the wounds she’d taken falling into the ant nest. Like then, I had the sense I was on a clock, like there was a hidden timer somewhere, an hourglass filled with sand that was rapidly running out. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t shake that feeling.
Horns blew as I approached Gideon’s fortress. They’d spotted me for sure, but one advantage to riding the only undead tyrannosaur in the area was that people recognized Sue without trouble. Soon as they saw my dino coming, they knew it was me. Gideon would be alerted and waiting before I arrived.
Sure enough, the gates were open when I came up to them, slowing Sue down from the breakneck pace we’d kept up the entire journey here.
“Lady Selena, welcome, and please come inside,” one of the gate guards told me. He gestured toward the open gates. “Lord Carver will be right here to meet you.”
I gave him a sharp nod and guided Sue into the courtyard beyond. Once we were inside the gates, they closed rapidly behind us. I silently ordered Sue to stand fast and wait for me, and leaped from the dino’s back, using a burst of my Flight power to glide gently to the ground. I had to admit, Flight made mounting and dismounting from a dinosaur a heck of a lot easier.
The interior of the fortress was dominated by a single towering building. There were other structures now as well, many of them, but the massive pre-Event brick building was still the visible center of the action. Gideon strode quickly from the front door, walking to meet me.
“Selena. It’s always good to see you, but I wasn’t expecting a visit. Is something wrong?” Carver asked.
“Yes,” I replied. Keep it simple, right? “We need to talk privately.”
“Understood. Come with me.”
He guided me inside the central building and up a flight of stairs. I recognized the path; we were headed to the meeting room where he had his fancy tabletop map, the place he’d hosted one of the alliance meetings. It would do well enough for what we had to discuss.
On the way up we passed one of his people, and Carver paused. “Bring a bottle of wine and a plate of whatever the kitchen has handy to the meeting room, will you please, Mary? I have a guest, and we’ll be busy for a while. Please knock when you arrive.”
“Of course, Lord Carver,” she replied, dashing back down the stairs.
We continued to ascend. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the Lord and Lady stuff. On the one hand, Carver seemed to genuinely treat his people well, in spite of the medieval titles. There was definitely something to be said in favor of that. But I had to wonder if we really needed to give up everything humanity had learned about human rights, self-governance, and all the rest, just because magic was back in the world. Wasn’t there a middle ground that could work?
I kept those thoughts to myself, for the time being. There was no sense aggravating the one firm ally I felt I had left.
Gideon led the way to the meeting hall and opened the door, ushering me inside. He closed it behind us and pulled two chairs to a table.
“You look parched, which is why I called for the wine. Some sort of snack will be along as well, if you’re hungry,” Gideon said. “But for now, please sit, and tell me why you’ve come.”
“It’s not a short story,” I warned him.
He shrugged, settling himself into one of the chairs. “I have time. Sit. Talk.”
I spilled the story, working hard to be as complete as possible while also not adding too much embellishment. I wanted to hand him all the facts first, and then get his impression with as little of my own opinions overlaid as possible. I told him first about the avians arriving on our doorstep. He was a bit shocked at that.
“So you took them in?” Gideon asked. “And that worked for you?”
I nodded. “I’ve managed to build up a little credibility with them over the past month. There was a case where some humans swiped an avian kid. I managed to get their child returned to them. In return, they helped fight Lyonius.”
“I remember that,” he said. “But have they worked with you since then?”
“No, not since. Well, now they are. The ones still alive, anyway. Most of their colony was killed.”
I went on to explain the story they’d told me, about how Peter and Turner attacked them together. Peter was riding a dragon, breathing fire to scorch them out of the airport ruins, while Turner’s troops did their part from the ground. The end result was the total ruin of their base. Their leadership was slain, and very few avians had escaped at all.
Mary showed up partway through the story, knocking on the door. Gideon let her in to drop off her supplies: a bottle of red wine, two goblets, and a tray of cookies. I snagged one of those right away. We still had some packaged pre-Event cookies we’d grabbed from the supermarket, but these were fresh baked. I wasn’t going to pass that up!
Once she left, I continued the tale. Carver didn’t say much through all of this, so I kept going, telling him about Kara and my visit to the Air Guard base. When my story got to the part about Delores dying, Gideon nodded and broke in.
“That, I’d heard about. Since you’re spilling secrets here, I will do the same. I have two people in that base. They report back to me when something noteworthy happens, and they reported her death,” Gideon said. “What they didn’t report is any hint of foul play. It sounds to me like you’re suggesting Turner had her killed, and if that’s the case, the people living there definitely do not know. My spies would have reported it, if they did.”
“Turner says she died in the fighting,” I replied. “But what was she doing near the fighting? She didn’t have combat skills. She was a noncombatant, remember? Intellect, Will, and some Stamina, but no combat powers.”
He nodded. “I remember. What do you think happened, then?”
“I was rather hoping that you’d tell me what you thought instead of letting my guesses color your opinions,” I said.
“Fair enough. Let me consider this, then.”
I let him think for a minute, but then something occurred to me. “Hey, you have two spies in Turner’s camp. Do you have any hidden in mine?”
Gideon arched an eyebrow. “If I did, do you think I’d just tell you?”
“Probably not.”
He laughed. “No, I don’t, Selena. I don’t need to. You have one of my people there supervising the construction of your walls, remember? You have my spy in plain sight, and from everything he’s passed along to me, you’ve treated him just like you do all your people—very well.”
“Now, about this issue with Turner and Eddings?” Gideon said, drumming his fingers on the table as he spoke. “I’m not sure what we’re looking at here. It’s certainly a little adventurism, but then again, you did the same thing, tackling that goblin camp without asking for help first. It’s hardly odd for Turner to take out the avians. He’s been wanting to remove them for weeks now. Eddings helping out is a logical extension of his trying to more deeply ingratiate himself with the alliance.”
“All true,” I replied. But my gut said there was more to it than that. How could I explain that to him, though? “But Turner is firmly in command there again. Delores is dead and the council is either disbanded or defanged. I couldn’t be sure which during my short visit.”
“The council still exists, but it seems to now be advisory only,” Gideon said.
“That council was formed because the people there didn’t trust Turner anymore. From what I saw, that hasn’t changed. He just took power back. My gut says this was a coup, Gideon.”
“Your intuition has been excellent so far, but I would like to see if we can find more evidence to support this theory before we take action based on it,” Gideon replied. “What should we do, if Turner did have Delores killed?”
“I wish I knew. If he did that, and Eddings supported him in it, that…” I paused, thinking. “That could be very bad, or it might be meaningless, and internal struggle that doesn’t really impact us. I still don’t think trusting Turner makes much sense, mind.”
“But you already mistrusted him. That’s not new.”
Horns blew outside. Gideon rose immediately from his chair, stalking his way to the nearest windows. Staring out, he looked out over the land. I watched his eyes track back and forth, clearly seeking whatever had alarmed his people, unable to spot it.
Then he froze.
“It seems we might be about to get some new insight into the matter,” Gideon said.
I set down my glass and rose, crossing the room toward him. “Why? What’s up?”
Gideon pointed at the horizon. Not at the distant ground, but toward the sky. There was a moving object out there, coming in from the north and moving at high speed. It would be here in a minute or two, tops. I already knew what it was. There was only one flier that large in the region. It had to be Peter and his damned dragon.
Why come here? Fear grabbed at my guts. It couldn’t be for any good reason. As we watched, the dragon soared nearer, closing the distance even more quickly than I’d guessed. He circled overhead twice, surveying the castle from above. He’d have seen Sue, then, which meant he knew I was there as well. Shit, that wasn’t awesome. I’d have much preferred slipping out without being noticed.
Peter guided his beast toward the ground, and the dragon stooped, then dove toward the courtyard.
Gideon turned to me. “Today is turning into a day of visitors and meetings, I see. Shall we go see what our latest visitor has in mind?”
He headed for the door without waiting for me to reply, so I followed close on his heels. What else could I do?
At least now I’d get some solid answers. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t going to like what I found out, though.
Comments
MARK FRINK
and internal struggle - should be an internal struggle
