Adam's Journey (The Aliomenti Saga - Book 8) Page 23

  And at some point, he realized that their power and technology, impressive though it might be, was not infallible. Even now, with greater power and more potent technology, people died from sword thrusts. The Hunters and Assassin didn’t have better swords.

  There must be some common thread connecting those who survived and those who did not.

  His father had figured it out. At a minimum, the healing nanos had to be in place before the fatal sword thrust. By refusing the post-stabbing healing nano help, his father called attention to that.

  But people with nanos inside before sword thrusts still died.

  They died when those sword thrusts ripped massive holes through vital organs. Autopsies of their dead showed this to be true.

  The solution seemed obvious.

  He’d put his healing nanos in his mother before Maynard’s attack.

  And he’d substituted a sword of his own creation, one he could make avoid those critical organs. A sword that would puncture skin and muscle, creating puncture wounds that would cause a great deal of bleeding, but not puncture those vital organs.

  “So that’s why you changed Maynard’s sword?”

  “That’s right. Will is going to put some special machines inside Eva that will help her start healing, and he will use his Energy to help her as well. That’s important. It’s also something I can’t do; if I put Energy into her, he’ll know. So, I will put my machines into her body—in fact, I already have—so that the healing starts even as the sword touches her skin. Once he’s finished stabbing her, I will pull my machines out as Will puts his in. As for the sword? It’s made of a special metal that I can… well, that I can control with my mind. Maynard will still stab her. But I will tell the metal to avoid hitting anything inside her that would kill her. It will be messy and will hurt, but she will live.” As he spoke, he summoned Maynard’s original sword to his side; he’d need it before the upcoming events occurred.

  “I’m not sure I understand that,” Genevieve confessed from her invisible cocoon to his side. “But I know I watched that sword… grow on the floor of Maynard’s cottage. I have little doubt that what you say is true, even if it doesn’t make sense.”

  He smiled, even though he knew she couldn’t see the gesture. “When we get back to my time, I’ll make sure you have the ability to do the same thing.”

  “Thank you.” She paused. “What are they talking about?”

  He’d kept them close enough that they could see the events unfolding, could watch when Maynard would draw his sword, but far enough away that they couldn’t hear the trio’s conversation. “Arthur’s using the opportunity to taunt his superiority, but also trying to gather information. He knows there are others still in the village who oppose him, beyond Will and Elizabeth, and he’s certain Eva knows exactly who they are. While he has his suspicions, and is probably correct, he’d rather she confirm it.”

  “If he knows, why does he care if she confirms it?”

  “It’s a mental thing. If Arthur figures out that, say, Matilda is part of the hidden opposition and exposes her, then Matilda thinks she did something to make her viewpoints too obvious. She’d blame herself. But if he can tell her that Eva gave that information away, Matilda would feel a sense of betrayal, which makes it worse. And others in the village would wonder how Eva, who is quite strong, was persuaded into telling her friends’ secrets. The only conclusion they can have is that it’s never safe to oppose Arthur, and they’ll stop their efforts.”

  Her silence told him she’d recognized Arthur’s subtle aggregation of power over the village in the past; seeing a new example, once identified, was no shock to her. He’d been solely focused on attaining and wielding that power for years, and yet at some point she’d truly loved him. It was something he’d always wondered about.

  And he realized he could finally ask. “When did he change?”

  “Who?”

  “Arthur. At one point you openly loved him enough that the villagers insisted on sending my father along with the two of you as a chaperone. Elizabeth tells the story about how he bought you the necklace and hairpin because he so wanted you to have them. But somewhere after that… something changed.” He paused. “You seem to recognize him now for what he is, and in each of my visits to the village through time your disdain for him has been quite obvious. What changed?”

  She was silent for a time, and he wondered if, perhaps, he’d pushed too far, if he’d asked the question he couldn’t yet ask, if he’d alienated her entirely.

  And then she spoke. “He didn’t buy the necklace.”

  “He… didn’t buy…”

  “He stole it. He bought the hairpin… because he had the money… but he stole the necklace.”

  He couldn’t see the connection. “But how—?”

  “It was the last time we went to trade before we went out on the longer journey.” She paused, collecting her thoughts. “I went with them that time, because we were trying to have each person in the village learn additional skills. People could get sick, or die, or otherwise leave. I trained someone to watch the animals while I was gone and went with them so I could be with him.” The last four words were spoken with such disgust that Adam almost felt as if he’d been slapped by them. “We went. I watched them trade, I watched as he used his skill with words to wheedle every possible coin out of every sale and purchase, watched Eva do the same. I tried once, and did so poorly that Arthur actually stepped in and kindly—kindly!—told the vendor we weren’t yet sure if we wanted to buy and pulled me away. He seemed the perfect gentlemen.

  “On our last day there, after all of our sales were made, after all of our purchases were completed and packed away, we strolled the city together. Happy. Maybe even in love. I don’t really know. I saw the necklace and the pin. He encouraged me to try them on, and I loved them, but the asking price was such that I knew I’d never have them. I gave them back to the vendor and left, sad. I saw him looking at me, with a look of empathy I’ve not seen on him since.

  “On our way home, he presented me with the necklace and hairpin. It was during one of our stops on the way home, when Eva and the others weren’t watching, and he made me swear not to show them to anyone. I understood. We weren’t exactly wealthy people then; extravagances like that would make the others wonder exactly where he’d gotten the money. And frankly? I should have wondered as well. But I did what he said. I kept them in the soft red velvet bag they’d been in when he gave them to me and hid them in my cottage.

  “After our journey and after Elizabeth was born, the others were… harsh on us. Especially him. It wasn’t unjustified, of course, but it was harder on him because he knew he had nothing to do with Elizabeth. And yet he pretended, played along long enough that he couldn’t later say she wasn’t his. He’d agreed to marry me, after all, and we’d squeezed into one cottage until we convinced the villagers to create the larger dwelling.

  “They went back to that same village again a few months after Lizzie’s birth. And when Arthur walked by the jewelry vendor, the man started shouting. He’d figured out that Arthur had stolen the merchandise. We’d shown interest. The man realized Arthur really wanted to get it for me. Arthur went back and tried to negotiate a great price, but couldn’t get the price low enough that he could supplement his money with profits skimmed from the group. And so he went back that night, before our morning departure, and stole the merchandise. They all knew who Arthur was, having all been trading with him for several years, and there were enough witnesses to his desperation to get the jewelry that the vendor’s claims were proof enough. And so, they arrested him, threw him in their jail, and chained him.”

  Adam felt the despair in her voice grow, as if wondering if it was her fault that the monster was unleashed. “When you saw him that day so many years ago, the day we were all captured, it was a day he’d been left to die on the side of the road, too weak to go on. His parents kept him shackled and chained and forced him to… perform for others. He received no prai
se, no show of affection, was fed barely enough to keep him alive. When his appearance became so foul and disgusting that they had no more use for him… they threw him away. He vowed if he survived he’d never again be in chains, that he’d be free. Even when he was a slave, he wasn’t in chains, and had more freedom than he’d ever known. He was happy. The horrors of his past sank further into his memory.

  “When they chained him up, it brought it all back. They cut his sentence short because his screams were so horrific that they couldn’t stand it. But it had been enough. I could see the change in his eyes right away. What happiness and love there might have been was gone; all that remained was coldness and all calculation. I don’t think it was enough to just not be chained anymore. I think… I think…”

  “That he wanted to be the one controlling the chains, controlling everyone else… because that’s the only way he could possibly prevent that type of imprisonment again.” He finished the thought for her, because he’d seen the depths the man had reached in his quest for full control, that he’d literally seized freewill from each new member of the Aliomenti from the first day of their Energy activation, molding them into human-like automatons that could see in him no error, that could never consider disagreement with him.

  Arthur’s life before his capture had been such an unspeakable horror that an evening in chains had snapped everything good in him for all eternity. All because he’d tried everything he could to get a gift for the girl he loved, even stealing for her.

  For the first time in his life, Adam felt a small bit of sympathy for Arthur Lowell.

  That sympathy lasted until he saw the man offer a barely perceptible nod to Maynard.

  ~~~49~~~

  1021 A.D.

  As Maynard pulled the sword silently from its sheath, Adam provided the nanos comprising the facsimile with instructions, ordering them to pierce her skin and muscle layers, then scatter and reform on the opposite side of her body, just before hitting the muscle and skin layers. Muscle could heal. Skin could heal. Blood would regenerate, if slowly. His instructions would leave her vital organs intact while generating enough of a mess to convince everyone that nothing unusual was afoot. Blood spurted, Eva gasped, Maynard smirked, and Arthur looked pleased.

  Genevieve’s voice darted into his consciousness. “There’s Will!”

  He was vaguely aware of his friend’s emergence from the trees, shouting at the co-conspirators, but he kept his focus on the sword. Once the tip emerged through the front of her body, Maynard pulled back, working to extract the sword. Adam ensured that the nanos scattered once more on the way back out of her body and reassembled as they passed through the skin of her back.

  Once the sword left her body, he recalled his healing nanos, knowing that Will’s were on the way or already there. His friend flooded his mother’s body with Energy infused healing intent, doing all he could to stave off ongoing blood loss and to help heal what he’d reasonably assume as extensive damage to her internal organs.

  If Will had been right, he would find that Eva would slowly succumb, despite his efforts, and pass on into death.

  But Will wasn’t right.

  He watched in silence, focusing on the sword rather than the bloodied, pale body of his mother as she lay on the ground, bleeding and unconscious. He tuned out Will’s shouting, his fury at the two men who’d slaughtered an unarmed woman in cold blood. He only noticed Genevieve’s voice once, when Will pulled Arthur off the horse and slapped the animal on the haunches. The animal bounded away, to Genevieve’s merriment, and Arthur realized he’d need to walk back to the village without his noble steed.

  As Genevieve chuckled, Will turned on Maynard, wrestled the sword from the giant’s hands, and threw it an appreciable distance away.

  He flew to the spot, sending the hidden cocoon with Maynard’s original sword ahead of him. He muted Genevieve’s microphone so he could devote his full attention to the sword swap. If the swords were clean, the swap would be simple. But Maynard would expect to see the evidence of his misdeed on the sword, and he couldn’t risk having Maynard get his original sword back perfectly clean.

  He pushed the real sword beneath the original and aligned the two blades perfectly. He had the nano based sword split in half and pulled those nanos comprising the weight and interior mass away, leaving nothing but the external form behind in two pieces.

  The two split halves slid further apart and down, sliding around the original blade and rejoining at the middle. The replica sword, complete with the ichor of the recent attack, was now wrapped around the original sword.

  He then thinned out the remaining nanos of the fake sword, which had the effect of bringing the blood closer to the original sword until, at long last, all the nanos were gone. The original sword looked as if it had been used in the attack.

  Maynard would never know he’d not used his own sword in the murder attempt. Will would never know that Eva’s injuries weren’t as extensive as he’d reasonably assumed. Eva would never know that her son had been there, ensuring that she’d live long enough to hold him as a newborn child many centuries in the future.

  He’d done it.

  He blinked a few times, took several deep breaths, and then reopened the microphone link with Genevieve.

  “—aren’t you saying anything?”

  “Sorry.” He took a deep breath. “I had to swap out the fake sword and put the real sword back before Maynard picked it up. I didn’t listen to you because I needed to concentrate on finishing that.”

  “Oh.” A pause. “Is that… done?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “What were you asking about? While the microphone was off?”

  “The what?”

  “The microphone.” Oh. “That’s what we call the thing that lets us talk to each other right now.”

  “I was just… reacting to what was happening and couldn’t understand why you weren’t saying anything. I wish you’d told me you were going to… turn the… micro-thing… off. I wondered if you’d just left.”

  “Sorry.” And he was. “There’s no more we need to do here. Will is going to wait until Arthur and Maynard are gone. Then he’ll take Eva to a cave only he and Elizabeth know about and start nursing her back to full health. He’ll return here to dig an empty grave and then go back to the village, where Arthur and Maynard will claim that Will killed Eva.”

  “What?” She sounded shocked. Briefly. “That does sound like something Arthur would do. They see him as the last remaining threat. Pinning a murder on him…”

  “Don’t worry. Will makes sure everyone knows the truth. Arthur will, temporarily, be reduced to little more than the resident baker; the village will stop giving him money for Elizabeth’s time and he has to make an income with his dormant cooking skills.”

  She laughed. “Sounds like the perfect punishment for him. And as much as I’d like to see that… I’d rather go see my daughter again.”

  “We have one more stop. But it won’t take long at all.”

  “I’m ready.”

  He flew them back to the time machine, closed the lid, and thrust his fist into the recharger. He fumbled around in his bag for his diary… and found it missing.

  “Looking for something?”

  Adam glanced up. Genevieve, in the back seat, held the journal out to him. “I’m trying to improve my reading skills. This is the only book available.” She handed the book over, trying to look innocent, and failing. “Sorry.”

  He wanted to be angry. But she’d taken everything far too well to begrudge her this minor transgression. He knew she couldn’t do anything with the time machine, no matter what she might read in the journal. “Learn anything interesting?”

  “Not yet. The words are strange, and the letters are shaped differently than the ones I’ve been trying to learn.”

  He nodded as he flipped through the pages to the section about his final, brief stop in his journey. “Language changes over time. It’s subtle, and
it’s only after decades or centuries have passed that you’ll truly notice the difference.”

  He felt her hand on his shoulder and turned to see her staring at him, her gaze intense. “Centuries? You’ve not told me just how far in the future you’re from.”

  He stared back. “How far do you think, given everything you now know? And how far are you willing to accept?”

  She dropped her gaze, thinking. “Every detail suggests centuries except one.” She looked back once more. “How are Lizzie and Arthur and Eva still alive?”

  He nodded. “What if I told you that, in the next few months, Will, Elizabeth, and Eva will discover a food that prevents the body from aging, letting them live forever?”

  She started to laugh. Then frowned. “I’d call that crazy. Except that I’ve seen my Lizzie eat a food that gave her access to the thoughts and emotions of others.” She tapped the lid of the time machine. “And I’m hearing this from a man who came here in a room that flies like a bird and is invisible like the wind, and somehow moves us forward years in just a few seconds.”

  He nodded at her. “When I started my journey to the past, I did so in the year 2219. I traveled back in time to the year 995, when I first met my father on the road heading the wrong way.”

  He pulled his fist from the recharging station and entered the time and space coordinates, punching the activation button, watching her incredulous face as the lid went opaque and the sense of displacement swirled through them once more.

  ~~~50~~~

  1029 A.D.

  The mild sense of displacement ended, and Adam watched as the top of the time machine cleared. This stop, the last before beginning the journey home, would be perhaps the simplest; there’d be only a mild bit of prep work to avoid detection.