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The answer was obvious to her.
“The shipisthe bomb,” she said, her eyes wide. “Wax said he was going to try to interrupt the artillery launch. So they sent a ship instead, at full speed, laden with explosives.”
“Blessed Preservation,” Reddi whispered, then looked at the vast station still full of people. They, including the ones already evacuated, represented only a fraction of the city’s population. “Can we shell it?”
“And detonate the bomb?” Steris asked. “They wouldn’t have chosen this delivery mechanism if destroying the ship would stop the bomb.”
“So Dawnshot has failed,” the governor said, slumping to the side against a pillar. “Elendel is lost.”
“How long do we have?” Steris asked.
“At full speed from Bilming?” Reddi said. “Not long. Hours at most. Most likely less than that.”
“We can get away,” the governor said, “if we leavenow.We have to get on this train!”
Steris stood there, numb. The other senators had already evacuated. They would rant all day that she was wrong, but when there was a whiff of actual smoke, they broke down the doors to flee.
But she knew. Sheknew.
She slammed her hand against her notebook, surprised at her forcefulness, causing the panicking governor to hesitate.
“That ship,” she said, “will not reach this city.”
“How do you know?” the governor said.
“Because my husband, Waxillium Ladrian, will prevent it.”
“And if he doesn’t?” the governor said.
Steris flipped through her notebook to the disaster scenarios she’danticipated, landing on a specific page full of projections about the dangers of offshore earthquakes.
“He will,” Steris promised. “But we need to evacuate the region nearest the bay just in case. And prepare for the possibility of a tsunami.” She flipped to a map of the city, pointing. “We need these areas evacuated next in case the best my husband can do is detonate the weapon early.”
“But… if Dawnshot fails…”
“He will not fail,” Steris said. She took the governor by the arm. “I need your help. Don’t go. Stay. Be a hero, Varlance.”
“But…”
“My husband will stop the ship.”
“How do youknow?” he asked. Nearby, one of the trains let out a jet of steam, and last call was shouted. Governor Varlance took one step that way, but then looked to her.
“Some things,” she said softly, “cannot be planned for in life. I struggled to learn that, Varlance. But there is one thing I’ve learned that is true: No matter what else happens, Waxillium Ladrianwillget wherever he needs to be. Somehow.”
68
Marasi undid the final latch and heaved open the heavy metal hatch. Her arm and leg still ached, but she’dovercome her immediate exhaustion.
No army had appeared. The soldiers in Wayfarer, with Entrone captured, had backed down. Most everyone else—by the lord mayor’s orders—was confined to quarters.
Everyone was waiting to see what happened next.
“We should have known,” Armal whispered from lower on the ladder. “This much metal, by their own admission, would have drawn their ‘mutants.’ This hatch was never to lock them out, but to lock us in, so we could never visit the observation room unsupervised.”
Marasi climbed up into the observation chamber, which was indeed different from the projection room she’dvisited earlier in the day. This one was a simple round room with one flat wall—the “window” that displayed a destroyed city and falling ash. Apparently opening the hatch triggered the system.
Knowing what she did, Marasi could see the flicker of the image as proof of its fake nature—but to someone who had never encountered anything like it, it would be astonishingly convincing. Somehow appearing on the back wall without the projector streaming light through the room in a way that could be interrupted.
