“Will he?” I ask.
“I don’t know. We’ll see.”
Kilon braves the cold without a jacket and runs to us with his phone in his hand. “Diem just called. They’ve found Navin.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Leigh taps his pen on the cement desk in the corner of his office in a town just thirty miles from Kilon and Sassi’s cabin. None of us have slept so the minutes tick slowly by while he says nothing, although his face tells us of a thousand irritations. Briston, Kilon, Sassi, Arek, and I all stand quiet in a very warm room that smells of cigar smoke while we try desperately not to wake the beast. His stone eyes never seem to be all that different from Navin’s, and no matter the fact that Arek is his son, he makes me want to cower like a child.
There are moments when I don’t feel sane, a bit like multiple personalities. One wants so desperately to hide, to climb within herself to ward off what I know we must do next. Yet the other has no respect for Leigh even if he is leader of the Protectors, which makes me squeeze my hands into tight fists.
Finally, Leigh answers—his morning voice raspier than usual. “Diem knows where Navin is?”
Kilon nods, his large hands clasped firmly in front of him. “Yes sir. They’ve been following him for days and have finally have him zeroed in.
Stone. I believe Leigh is quite possibly made of stone. He continues, “I have orders to bring Remy in. No one can wait any longer.”
“It can wait,” Arek says flatly.
“Are you ready to stand in front of the Powers or the Prophets? It’s not you, son. It’s me and I must give them reason if I do not do exactly as they ask. Covey has gone to the Reds and now the Reds are threatening to pull their backing if we do not incarcerate her immediately.” Leigh lights another cigar.
“Why not tell them you know where Navin is?”
“He’s not the criminal they want. She is.”
Arek laughs a joyless laugh, which is quite possibly the only thing keeping him from fighting back. “The Velieri government does not want the man who fights against everything they stand for? The man who’s created an entire rebellion against the rules they set. The man who tortures someone and sends it viral? Don’t you find that strange, Leigh? What deal do they have? How about I send the video to the Reds and show them what the son of the Leader of the Protectors is doing to one of theirs. Maybe that will get someone’s attention?”
“You do that, son, and the Reds pull out from every contract we have with them,” Leigh says angrily.
“That might be just what the Powers and Prophets need. No more Reds to cover up.”
Leigh is quiet for a moment, sharing instantly by his silence that he has seen the video from the night before. He taps the end of his cigar in a glass ashtray and then stands on his stick legs, leaning as if to help a stiff back, and comes around the desk. “Prove to me you know where to find Navin.”
Minutes later, a large map has been brought up on one of the monitors. We study it. The map is two colors, gray and a hazy yellow. Most everything is labeled with black letters on a gray background, and Kilon presses the yellow, then zooms in with two fingers. “Diem and the others have found that he’s set up business at one of the Bryers in Nepal.” Kilon pulls out his phone, connecting it to another nearby computer and in seconds there are photographs of an ancient castle set comfortably in the tree-laden woods. Men and women are coming and going through the tall ornate doors of this place. Kilon stops on one of the pictures, then stretches it wide. The man with a baseball cap and sunglasses with a phone to his ear is obviously Navin.
Leigh swallows as he scratches his beard, but he says nothing.
So Kilon continues, “Trying to flank from the back will nearly be impossible with the Crescent Cliffs just behind. This is the only option.” He rubs a path with his fingertip.
“Smart mother—” Briston begins to curse but thinks better of it.
“Why?” I ask. “Why is this place smart?”
Arek crosses his arms. “It was built seven hundred years ago as a neutral zone. It has no jurisdiction. No Epheme or Velieri, no government can claim it because of the place where it is situated, on the boundary line of the forest. No one could win the battle for it. There are several of these Bryers all over the world; they are a “no man’s land.” Criminals are free there. Protectors have no authority.”
Sassi pleads, “Navin knows what he’s doing, Leigh.”
“Can we go back a little?” Peter requests with a raised eyebrow. “Japha was dead—Alfonzo Geretzima and his Shadowghosts killed him years ago . . . didn’t they? Has he been here at this Bryer the whole time?”
Kilon’s increasing tension begins at the mention of Japha’s name, just as I’d noticed before. “Nobody knows where he’s been, kid. I would have found him and killed him myself if I’d known.”
“The man is nearly as old as Gyre. He knows what he’s doing,” Leigh states.
“Enough to get past Geretzima and his men?” Peter clasps both hands on the top of his head.
“Obviously,” Leigh quips.
“Why is Japha involved in all of this?” I stare straight at Kilon when everyone else does. He uncomfortably shuffles in his stance while staring at the floor.
“He wants what Navin wants . . . obliteration,” Briston says quietly.
“He wants power,” Kilon’s words erupt from him like they’ve been bubbling beneath the surface for years. “He’s a sociopath. If his name is on someone’s tongue then he’s done well—good or bad.” A strange irritation manifests on his tense muscles and pulsing veins along his arm. Sassi reaches out and runs her hand along his forearm. Kilon looks at me, “Japha came to the shores of Africa when I was just a child. He took me and my family to own us.”
“I thought you had been with me for years before the Civil War?” I ask with surprise.
Sassi lifts an eyebrow, “Slavery happened long before the history books discuss.”
Kilon continues, but he speaks as if the memory is still fresh and the anger drips from his tight lips, “I’d had enough. I was going to give him one more time . . . one more time to touch me before I’d kill him. But it wasn’t me. He took my sister from her bed when she was fourteen.” His memories are rising like steam from his heated body and heavy sweat. “I snapped . . . threw myself at him. It took seven of his men to pull me off him.”
The room remains uncomfortably quiet to allow the wound in his eyes to tell the story. When it seems he won’t say anything else, suddenly he continues, “That night he killed my mom, dad, and sister to get back at me for the embarrassment I’d caused him.”
Leigh breathes in and out with heavy frustration. Perhaps Kilon is making him feel.
Arek takes over and I understand that the rehash of this story isn’t for my knowledge, as Leigh’s discomfort grows. “Japha did everything in his power to break the council. He used his control over people’s minds to do his bidding without them realizing it. But then Briston,” Arek finally looks at me, “found some evidence against him and kicked him off the Powers. After that, he and Navin started the Rebellion.”
“What do you want to do, Arek?” Leigh asks with a raised brow.
“Tomorrow we go. I’ve spoken to my brothers and Diem. I can get a group of Protectors together in Nepal, where he is.”
