AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It made him predictable. Press the right button and you were sure of the kind of response you would get. That’s how they knew he would take that shuttlecraft and head for the front lines.
They knew where the army’s general would be, and the Changelings didn’t hesitate to take advantage.
That was the problem with Titans. We were too honorable. We followed our code of ethics and it never dawned on us until it was too late that our enemy wouldn’t do the same.
If they did, they would lose. So, what was their incentive?
I scratched Niik behind the ears as he got comfortable at the foot of the desk. He always liked to lay there. It wasn’t that he thought he was protecting me or the office, it was that he was in the way and wouldn’t move without a little scratch.
I sat in the chair and Niik whined.
“I know, boy,” I said. “I miss them too.”
Father and my elder brother.
They killed Qale, the rightful Lord of Taw, and still I refused the call to war. What did that make me? In Titan circles, it made me a coward.
It was the worst insult there was.
Just hours after my brother fell, I was forced to decide whether or not to attack the Changeling army headed our way. I couldn’t stop thinking about all those innocent lives I might be hurling onto the fire. Was victory worth the cost of so many?
I buckled.
I backed down and refused to light the beacon.
And I’d been living in two minds about that decision ever since.
I moved to the window and peered out at Ot’ah, the tallest mountain in the valley. Up there was the beacon. Light it and Muhtix, the next town, would see it. They would light their beacon and it would spread across the entire moon… and then beyond, to the very stars in the night sky.
We were the greatest of all the houses. The other lords turned to us to lead them to victory.
And I had stood them down.
Beacons were a part of our history, our brave Titan tradition. These days we could have sent electronic messages… except the Changelings intercepted all our communications. We had to rely on the old ways.
And once the armies stood down and the warriors returned to their homes, terrified of what might happen next, I sat at this desk, unable even to toss my father’s thinking ball.
I was so ashamed.
My eyes moved to the pile of letters and news printed from our electronic communications systems. I had no interest in any of it…
Except for the aged yellow parchment paper close to the middle of the pile.
About a week after I decided to stand down, I received two pieces of mail. The first was the invitation to the emperor’s palace. The other was a handmade note, the letter folded in on itself so the letter paper itself was the envelope—identical to the one I held now in my hand. It bore no postmark and must have been hand-delivered. I opened it and discovered a message written in an unfamiliar scratchy hand.
It was written not with traditional Titan letters but those me, my brother, the prince when he was young, and the maid’s son had devised one day while we were playing. It would be fun, we thought, if we could pass notes to each other that no adult could read. That way, we could say anything we wanted without getting in trouble.
My ability to read the private language was a little rusty but it came to me after a few minutes:
THE RESISTANCE IS ALIVE
I blinked at it, unsure what it was referring to.
I tossed it on the fire and thought it was nothing but a bad joke. But a few days later, I received another letter. When I asked Aunzika to bring the messenger of the next letter to me directly, he had no idea what I was talking about.
No messenger had come.
The letter had appeared from thin air.
