Mortal

to speak.

He was looking her over with clinical appraisal. “You’ll be issued new clothing as you need it. Our counselor isn’t on duty-we weren’t expecting any new arrivals. I’ll take you back to your housing and you’ll have to get your instructions on showers and food from her later.”

Jonathan stood unmoving, staring through the bars.

“Each dorm is opened for one hour of each day. Unit Five is open now.” He glanced at his watch. “In fifteen minutes they go back and Six opens for an hour. You’ll learn the rules.”

She gave a mute nod.

“There’s no priest here. No basilica. Your last service will be your funeral. They’ll pray for you there. You’ll find a copy of the Book of Orders in your housing unit.”

Jordin felt ill.

“Stand back.”

Jonathan stumbled back as the guard lifted the heavy key ring from his belt, fitting the largest one into the gate’s heavy lock.

“Welcome to the gateway, if you’re fortunate, to Bliss.”

Bliss?

She peered at the rows of concrete buildings through the opening grate. The figures milling about outside of them, a few of them staring at the new arrivals at the gate, some of them from grimy dormitory windows. All of them waiting to die.

This then, was the desire of the Order’s Maker?

The gate swung wide as pale gray smoke wafted from the smokestack toward the restless heavens.

The condemned peered at her as though she were an apparition. A thing not from their realm, as though a part of them had already passed from this life into the next, and only waited for their bodies to catch up.

The guard stood aside, avoiding touching either one of them, she noted, as though death were a catching disease.

Move. But something within her balked at the thought of this place. Of setting foot on the cracked concrete walk that extended out from the gate, down between the rows of buildings. The Authority of Passing offended every sensibility within her as a Nomad. Its confinement, the view of nothing but the insides of those twenty-foot walls, the three-story round tower that was their only exit out-it all reeked of a living death. Of Corpse.

Move.

She stood rooted to the spot until Jonathan stepped forward. He walked past the guard and into the compound. The Giver of Life… standing in the place of death.

Bile rose up in her throat and for a moment she thought she might be sick.

Jonathan stopped ten paces in and looked back at her-a quiet look that was neither order nor request. Simple acceptance, whether she entered after him or not.

She knew then that she could walk away and he wouldn’t begrudge her. That he had no expectation of her.

That he would love her always.

There was still time. She could get him out. But that wasn’t his way, and she was here to follow him, not the other way around.

She put one foot in front of the other until she’d passed through the gate and joined him.

Overhead, the sky flashed, a white flicker of lightning against a black sky. Too silent.

They made it all the way to the electrical plant, just north of the Authority of Passing, before Rom’s horse collapsed under him.

Beast and rider crashed to the earth. Rom slid over the shuddering animal’s neck and slammed into the ground in front of it, scraping hair and skin from his chin. Ahead of him, Triphon jerked his mount to a halt. The horse began to buckle, but managed to recover as Triphon slid from the saddle.

Rom shoved himself forward and scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain that shot up his leg. He glanced desperately at the heaving sides of the stallion on the ground and then in the direction of the garbage docks, and what he knew lay beyond.

“Take mine!” Triphon said, thrusting the reins of his horse into his hand.

He glanced at Triphon.

“Go! I’m coming behind you!”

Without another word, Rom leaped up onto the back of Triphon’s mount, the flanks of which were twitching with fatigue. And then he dug his heels in and took off, willing it to live just another moment longer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE SUN WAS HIGH, bright even through a scrim of shifting clouds, when Saric led his twelve divisions into the Seyala Valley. Where the Lucrine River meets the badlands, the Mortal scout had said.

A broad green valley lay ahead, a half mile long before it narrowed into a canyon, lush and undisturbed by traffic-equine or human-or any other signs of passage. From here, the western slope rose sharply to the barren badlands, and the Lucrine River glinted with the occasional glimpse of sun. The forest hugged the opposite rise, typical of the patchwork greenery in these parts.

Saric lifted a hand shoulder-high, signaled the halt, and brought his stallion to a heavy-footed stop. The thudding of hooves and feet resolved into the creak of saddles and snorting horses.

He’d donned battle leathers only as a precaution, and now regretted doing so. They’d seen no sign of Mortals, no threat of any kind-only the occasional hare scurrying for cover as his army invaded a serene landscape most had never laid eyes on.

Brack pulled his horse alongside him. On his other flank, Varus, ranking general of all twelve divisions, studied the landscape before them.

“You’re sure this is it?” Saric asked.

“The Seyala Valley isn’t marked on our maps, but there’s no mistaking the location,” Varus said. “Either he made it up or he gave us the wrong location.”

“What about our scouts?”

“The canyon narrows to a file. Smells like a trap.”

“Clever. Clever Mortals, who mislead with a suicide scout,” Varus said, clicking his tongue.

“Yes.”

“Permission to speak?” Brack said. The captain of the elite guard held his lofty position directly under Saric in part because of his attention to the detail of loyalty. His devotion wasn’t necessarily greater than any of Saric’s other children, but he was an exceptionally refined man in all respects-strange, considering his violent nature. He was testament to the full power of the incubation chambers built by Pravus and perfected by Saric. They had indeed built a perfect species.

“Speak freely.”

“Even if the scout misled us, we can’t know that he did it under orders. He may have given false information on his own, to protect his people.”

Saric scanned the top of the cliffs for the dozenth time. “If you’re wrong and the scout intended to be taken- even knowing he might die-it would mean these Mortals have deep loyalties indeed.”

“We have to assume it’s a trap,” Varus said. “And that our entire army may be exposed.”

“How could a trap make sense?” Brack said, as if speaking to himself. “If the scout was correct, there are only seven hundred of them. Any confrontation would end in their elimination. Why go to all the trouble to dispatch a scout to lure us here under such impossible odds?”

“If the scout was correct,” the general said.

Clearly there was more to the Mortals than Saric yet knew.

The only thing worse than numerous enemies… was hidden enemies.