Angel of Storms (Millennium's Rule, #2)(70)

Some in the room had concluded that the Raen, by sending his allies to attack them, had meant it as a warning. Tyen was inclined to agree. Until now the guilt and horror he’d felt at the deaths had been tempered by the knowledge that many of the rebels were not planning to fight any longer. But now they were thinking that they could not abandon all the people in the worlds who suffered thanks to the Raen and his allies.

The Raen was right. The rebels won’t give up so easily. More are going to die. Maybe people I know and like. Yira was determined to keep fighting. As she looked at him she thought how much she needed him, both as a friend and an adviser.

“What was that?” a voice called out, and all fell silent. A sound escaped one of the side passages and all tensed. Then a collective sigh filled the cave as two familiar rebel leaders emerged. The pair looked exhausted.

“Ceilon is dead,” one of them said. “We found him at another regrouping place. We think one of the allies followed him.”

A whisper ran through the gathered.

“Did Ceilon know about this place?” someone asked.

“I think so.”

“We can’t stay here.”

Yira looked at Tyen. “They’re right. We need to go somewhere that no leaders know about.”

Tyen nodded. “The families need to be moved as well. Not as a group this time. Everyone should hide their own family, so that only one person among us knows where they are.”

Heads nodded. Nobody objected. Tyen realised they were all looking at him. Or Yira. A shiver of warning ran down his spine.

They targeted Ayan and Ceilon, one of the newcomers was thinking. The allies knew who were the true leaders among us. I’m not taking charge.

Another rebel’s thoughts caught his attention: Ceilon didn’t like them, but he and the woman have done the only smart things so far, and he was right about the base.

Face it, another was thinking. You panicked. You weren’t thinking at all. A leader has to be able to think, and they both look so amazingly calm.

… one of those two. I’d follow either, but I doubt everyone here will follow the orders of a woman.

Tyen turned to Yira.

“What do you think?”

She glanced at him, then around the watching faces. “Good advice,” she said. “Very good. Splitting into smaller groups for a while would be smart, too. I will leave a message at the inn in the city of Tarmten on Grenwald. Does anybody not know where Grenwald is?” A few hands rose. “Keep your hands up. Those who do know the location please pair up with those who don’t.” She waited until all of the pairings had been made. “Those of you with families go now and relocate them as quickly as possible–leave from here and go in different directions. The rest of you stay with me.”

Rebels began to vanish, and within a few breaths a diminished group of about twenty remained. All looked at Yira expectantly.

“There are hundreds of inns in Tarmten,” Yira told them. “We are going to leave different messages in each of them. The holders of those messages won’t know what they mean, except that they must give it to someone asking for me. The message will be directions to another location, where they will find a clue that will lead them to our new meeting places. The meeting places will be public, so we can observe who turns up.” She smiled. “Only those who have made it that far will find out where the new base is. Now, let’s get out of here before someone notices there are multiple new paths leading from this spot.”

She took Tyen’s hand and held her other one out to the nearest rebel. The rest shuffled quickly into a circle, took a collective breath, then the mine faded from sight.

A long time later, the rest of the rebels sent on their errand, Tyen and Yira finally paused to rest. They arrived in a sparsely populated world, in a narrow ravine crowded with vegetation and full of the noise of a fast-running stream. Choosing a mossy boulder, Yira sat down and stretched out her legs.

“By all the women who lived and fought before me, I hope this works.”

Tyen chose a rock a few paces away to settle on. “It’s a lot smarter than what Ceilon and Ayan were doing.”

“Is it?” She was staring intently at the vegetation, no doubt searching with both eyes and mind for other people. “I used nearly the same system of clues to bring my friends to the base, and you didn’t approve of that.”

“The weakness in that arrangement was nobody bothered to check if anyone was who they said they were until they had already arrived at the base. We’ll be making sure only the people we know are genuine rebels will reach the new one.”

“What if they’ve been caught and blackmailed into betraying us in the meantime?”

“I’ll read their mind to find out.”

Her eyebrows rose. “You convinced us all that mind reading was unwise.”

“Because everyone knew everything about all the other rebels. This time only one person will know what every person knows, and I will pass on what is safe for you to know.”

She narrowed her eyes. “That won’t seem fair.”

“It’s not. It can’t be.” Tyen sighed. “This isn’t about fairness, it’s about survival.”

“And what if someone reads your mind?”

He looked away. “I have never met anybody who could. That doesn’t mean someone stronger won’t join us and mess up our system. We’ll have to deal with that when it happens.”