Chapter 23
The flight was only a couple of hours. It was dark through the window, so Chun spent the time napping. He roused when the stewardess stopped by his seat and asked if he would like a meal. He said yes and selected the lamb.
After army food, this was delicious. The only problem was that they only brought him three bites. He asked if there was anything else, and they gave him a bag of roasted nuts, which was a single mouthful.
Four bites are better than three.
When he walked off of the plane it was into a throng of people like he had not seen since his youth. They were everywhere, mostly white adults, but some of the travelers had children, and he saw what he imagined must be every race of person in the world, just in this one massive hallway.
“Chun.” Jhon Bonga waved at him from across the seating area. He looked weary, and wary.
What has him on edge?
Chun made his way over. “Thank you for meeting me, Director. Do you know how I can reclaim my rucksack?”
“Sure do, follow me. Good flight?”
Chun nodded. They wove their way through the crowd, down a flight of stairs, and to a wide-open room with a large set of doors in one wall, and a large concrete area in the center. People were lining up at the edge of the concrete.
“Is it always like this?” Chun gestured at all of the people.
“Sort of,” Jhon said. “This is the capital, so there are always people coming and going, but this is Tobias’ Day, so lots of people are in town to meet with family.”
“What is Tobias’ Day?”
“This is the day we think Saint Tobias saved Kepstone and befriended the Skrit.”
Befriended them? What kind of saint is that?
Two families of Skrit made their way into the area, standing across the concrete from them. Their brown skin and straight, black hair contrasting with the primarily white crowd around them. The men wore business suits, but the women dressed in colorful robes that would have been appropriate in Chun’s time. He studied them for a moment.
Clearly not military, and no sign of power.
He focused his breath and reached out, searching for another wizard, but the only thing he felt was a flicker from Jhon Bonga, and a flicker a mile or more away.
“Are there no true wizards left?” Chun frowned as he scanned the crowd.
Bonga eyed him sideways. “No offense taken. By your standards, no. There are a few more powerful than I am, but not by much. No one knows how to do anything more impressive than light a candle anymore.”
“I’m sorry, Director. That was impolite. I do not sense anyone of great power and have not since I awakened.” Chun met Bonga’s eyes and tried to convey sincerity.
“You’re not used to me yet, Chun. When I said no offense taken, I meant it. I only mentioned it because I expect to have to teach you the nuances of getting along with people here.” He checked his watch. “They should be bringing the luggage any time.”
The doors slid aside, and a strange low-slung vehicle like a cross between a scout car and a family car drove in. It was towing several trailers that contained racks of luggage. He searched this side, then had to walk around to see the other side. Despite their apparent harmlessness, he kept a close eye on the Skrit as he passed. A little girl of eight or ten looked up at him, then moved behind her mother. From this close he felt his breath echo within her breath.
A sensitive. I should kill her before they can train her.
Jhon Bonga grabbed his elbow and pushed him forward. “Let’s get your bag and head home. I have important things to discuss with you, and I still need time to sleep.”
Chun resisted for a moment, then nodded and found his bag on the second trailer. Jhon led him outside where they crossed a wide road filled with cars and people trying to load or unload luggage. It was barely better than chaos.
Bonga led him up four flights of stairs and exited the stairwell onto a low-ceilinged parking lot. Chun looked around, eyes widening. “They have a whole building for parking cars?”
Bonga grinned at him. “This one is for the airport. They have others for hotels, the port, a couple of the largest hospitals, and a few others.”
Chun stretched his breath out, feeling the building, but found no trace of art. “How do you build things like this without artisans?”
Bonga frowned and raised an eyebrow at the same time. “What do you mean by artisan, Chun?”
“Wizards who build great things.”
Bonga nodded. “I see. We do it with machines and hard labor. Working on the construction of a site like this is dangerous and dirty, but the wages are enough to support a family.”
They found Bonga’s car, which turned out to be a long, shiny black machine with a cavernous trunk, where Chun put his rucksack, and a backseat that was made for sitting instead of storage. It took him a few seconds to figure out how to operate the door handle, with its handle that turned, but only if you pressed the button. He settled into the front seat.
So, this is what it must be like to be an emperor.
The seat was even wide enough for him, and padded, covered with deep red leather. “This is a very nice car,” Chun said.
Bonga shot him another amused smile. “I can’t complain, but sometime I’ll take you to see what the upper crust drives. Before we go, I need to talk to you about some things we really should have covered before you decided to come here.”
“I am ready,” Chun said.
“I’m pretty good at reading people, Chun. You were going to attack that little girl. Why?”
Chun nodded. “She is a sensitive. It would be best to kill her before she can be trained.”
“A sensitive?”
“Someone who can become powerful. Very powerful.”
“There are no powerful wizards left, Chun. Except you. Are you going to train her?” Bonga eyed him sideways.
“I am no traitor.”
“Then no one will train her. And I think that means there is no reason to kill her.”
Chun nodded. “That is reasonable. It will take some time for me to learn this new world.”
“Well, I’m about to show you things, people, plants, animals, and most of them very strange. I have Skrit working at the bureau, and I expect you to be professional to them. I am not hiring you to be an assassin. You are here to do research and train those around you.”
“That is good, Director. I am tired of killing.”
“I’m glad to hear that, but I need you to act like it. Do not kill anyone without discussing it with me first.”
“Okay.”
Bonga twisted in the driver’s seat to look at him directly. “Do you remember why we met?”
“Yes. You came to look for Archibald’s nephilim.”
“I need you to sit still and listen to me. All the way through before you decide anything. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All the way through, Chun.”
“I understand.”
“My normal driver and bodyguard is a young woman who came to live with me when she was six years old. She’s been with me for over twenty years now. She’s a nephilim, Chun.”
Chun held up a hand and pushed breath at Bonga, feeling for signs of darkness. He didn’t find any, so he refined his breath, threading it through Bonga's breath, searching for the telltale scars. His eyes widened.
“You have made bargains with devils.”
Bonga's eyes widened. “You can tell that? It’s been over two decades.”
Chun searched further, but Bonga appeared to be telling the truth. “You came to Fort Battering with priests. Do they know about your past?”
He nodded. “Two of them were at my exorcism. Father Morgan and Archbishop Sabin. I owe them… well, I suppose I owe them everything.”
“And they know about your nephilim?”
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Bonga froze. “Look, we just got into territory where the things I say can hurt more than just me. I take that seriously.”
“Take me to the archbishop. I will delve, and if he is tainted, I will need to make some difficult choices.”
“If he is tainted?”
“Have you ever met a dark priest, Jhon Bonga?”
“Not that I know of. I mean, I’ve met devil worshipers, but I get the feeling that isn’t what you mean.”
Chun shook his head. “Sometimes there are priests who lead normal churches, but they practice the dark arts in secret.”
Bonga relaxed. “I see. No, I’ve never met one of those. Morgan and Sabin are genuine believers. They aren’t practicing any dark arts in secret.”
Bonga backed the car out of their parking space, then turned and drove through the building. Chun was transfixed by the sheer number of vehicles, and the spiral ramp they descended to leave the building was so much fun he almost asked Bonga if they could do it again.
The city was full of light. There were lights down the streets, lights in the windows of buildings, even lights in the sky where aircraft made their way to new places.
“You don’t have walls,” Chun said.
“Do you mean defensive walls?”
“Yes. What keeps your enemies from riding in and raiding?”
A light above the street changed from green to red, and Bonga brought the car to a stop.
“I’d like to say humanity has gotten better, but the truth is that warfare has gotten bigger. Artillery can shoot more than ten miles, and it’s very difficult to build a wall that can stand up to that kind of beating, let alone tall enough to do any good at all.”
Chun tried to picture a battlefield with ten-mile sight lines, but it just didn’t make sense. “I helped build a siege engine once that could hurl a fireball eight hundred paces. We thought it was a marvel, but your people do far better without the aid of artisans.”
Bonga nodded and turned right at an intersection. “Some of us are worried that another war will break out soon. I very much hope we can find a way to stop it before it starts.”
“That seems like a noble goal,” Chun said. “I will help you, if I can.”
They parked the car in front of a huge church. Chun had trouble taking it in, particularly in the dark. It had a main section a thousand feet long, and spires that reached into the sky nearly three hundred feet. The building's skeleton was on the outside.
“Why is it built inside out like this?” Chun asked.
Bonga smiled. “That’s called a flying buttress. It helps support these tall walls and the pressure of the roof. I thought you ancient people had enormous buildings.”
Chun looked down. “I have destroyed a few, but never seen one under construction.”
“You talk about the war like it was the only thing you ever saw.”
“It began over twenty years before I was born and was still being fought when I went into the box. We were near collapse by then. I can’t say how long it went on after I left.”
“Four hundred years, without any breaks?” Bonga whistled.
Chun shook his head. “No. Mostly we fought in the dry part of the year. When it started to rain, we would retreat north.”
“Four hundred years,” Bonga said. “Why didn’t someone negotiate a peace?”
“We fought to end their empire. Erase them from history.”
Bonga frowned. “Do you mean genocide?”
Chun nodded. “Each side fought to extinguish the other.”
“And that’s why you were thinking about killing a child.”
“Yes.”
“I want you to think carefully about that. Someone made some monumentally bad decisions to start a conflict like that, and then they refused to make any adjustments. It’s… unthinkable.”
“Yes.”
They walked down a covered sidewalk past the church and to a large building. It was three stories high, painted white, and looked very plain compared to the church. Bonga knocked on the door and after a few seconds a man in a brown robe opened the door.
“Can you please tell Archbishop Sabin that Jhon Bonga is here, and that it is important?” Bonga asked.
The priest nodded and closed the door in their faces. They waited there for a few minutes and then the door opened again.
“Follow me,” the priest said.
He took them down a long hall to an apartment in the back corner of the ground floor, where he knocked.
“Come in,” Sabin’s voice rumbled through the door.
The priest opened the door, showed them in, then closed it behind them.
“Thank you for seeing us on such short notice,” Bonga said.
Sabin held a hand out, and Bonga took a knee and kissed the ring. Then Sabin turned to Chun. Chun spun out threads of breath, but something blocked him from delving the archbishop. He knelt and pressed his forehead to the ring, alert for a sneak attack.
Sabin walked to a chair and sat down. He wore a white shirt and a pair of black pants. Only his demeanor made him look out of the ordinary. Chun knew a predator’s eyes, and Sabin measured him for weaknesses every time he moved.
“What are you doing, boy?” Sabin narrowed his eyes towards Chun.
Bonga sighed. “This is Chun. So far this evening he’s been a bit short on manners. At the airport I stopped him from killing a ten-year-old girl. Now he’s trying to figure out if I’m still in cahoots with the devil.”
“How does he know?” Sabin turned his gaze to Jhon.
“Some kind of delving. He’s trying to figure out if we’re evil because we let Annabeth live.”
“Ah,” Sabin said. “I wonder that myself. Do you have a way to tell?”
“Yes,” Chun said.
Sabin pulled an amulet out of his shirt by its chain, then tossed it to Bonga. “What do you see now?”
Chun reached out and threaded his breath through Sabin’s. The archbishop was calm, and his mind was exceptionally orderly. From his eyes Chun had expected to find traces of malice or aggression, perhaps deception. What he got was a man who was comfortable with himself and his choices.
He withdrew the delving and went to sit by Bonga. “I do not sense darkness in you.”
Sabin held his hand out, and Bonga returned the amulet. “That is a relief.”
“You do not doubt yourself,” Chun said.
Sabin smiled. “Not anymore. I have discovered the power of kindness.”
“Why do you allow Jhon Bonga to keep a nephilim?”
“I don’t keep Annabeth,” Bonga said. “She lives with me. She’s not a pet.”
Sabin chuckled. “I let Annabeth go because she expressed a desire to see Heaven. I’ve never seen that from one of them. Never heard of it. Jhon told me that when he found her there was a messenger with her. The messenger told her that Jhon would show her the way to Heaven.”
Chun scowled at Sabin. “If you had word from a messenger, why did you doubt?”
“I live by rules. It feels natural to me. I believe God is a God of order. The notion that He might take a creature like her into His home goes against my instincts. It goes against my training. Hundreds of years of dogma tell me this is a crime.”
“What erased your doubts?”
Sabin held his hand up and tipped it back and forth. “Two things, really. The first was my discovery of mercy. It was all through the scriptures, but I had always focused on order. Mercy brings an element of chaos. It breaks the notion of absolute justice.
“The second thing was Annabeth. Not long ago we destroyed an occult device. Jhon and Annabeth found it, and my brothers and I prayed over it. When we were shown the enemy, Jhon ordered Annabeth to go get him. Sending a nephilim to fetch a committed dark wizard is not something I would ever recommend, but she brought him back.
“She is willful, stubborn, immodest, and has violent outbursts of temper. She also fights valiantly to do what she is able. In her way she is as faithful as any of us.”