“Oh, it’s just wood,” he said, and chuckled.
X laughed, too, but the jocularity vanished with the whistling wind.
Michael dropped Sofia’s sword, point first into the soil.
“Tell me again how we’re supposed to use swords on the machines,” Arlo said. “I don’t think I caught that part of the training.”
“You’re not,” X said. “They’re for human enemies.”
“And why is Pedro here?” Ted asked.
Hearing his name, Pedro walked over.
“He’s going with you to Africa,” X said. “He’s humbly volunteered to join the crew and share his knowledge of the machines.”
Michael wasn’t surprised to hear this and once again appreciated the man’s courage.
“Either way, I think I prefer my submachine gun and blaster,” Arlo said.
They had bigger problems than weaponry to worry about. Michael wondered whether X was thinking the same thing. How could a team of emotionally and physically broken-down Hell Divers fight the machines on the machines’ turf?
They weren’t ready, but would they ever be?
While the sun sank into the sea to end another day, Cazadores and sky people worked together preparing for war.
X was still in the Sky Arena, working with Mac and Felipe. He wanted to hear Imulah translate the book about the Outrider, but there would be plenty of time for that on the journey to the not-so-abandoned Cazador colony on Aruba.
Right now, though, he must learn how to fight one-handed with the spear if he had any hope of killing Horn.
Mac and Felipe finished off the rest of their water, and Mac motioned for X to get back into the ring.
“Again,” Mac said.
X gripped the spear as Mac had taught him, and then jabbed it through the air at the crab tattoo on Felipe’s skull, only to have the blade knocked away by his cutlass.
“Better, but too slow,” Mac said. He spat in the dirt. “It’s a shame you lost your knife hand—makes training all the more difficult.”
“No shit,” X muttered, panting.
He tightened the thong of the leather sheath on his spearhead. Ton and Victor watched his every move.
They weren’t the only ones. Miles watched from the stands and got up when X looked in his direction.
“Almost done, boy,” he said.
Looking at his wristwatch, he realized he was running out of time to spar. The ceremony for Michael and Layla was in an hour.
“We’ll pick this up later,” X said. “Thank you for helping me out, brother.”
X went back to his room, where he left Miles with a bowl of fresh food and water. Then he headed for the solar-heated showers on the floor below. Ton and Victor pushed open the double doors, and they all entered a steamy room that smelled like a mixture of body odor and flowers.
Ted and Arlo were in the first changing area. With his back turned and his long curly locks hanging over his shoulders, Arlo looked like a woman.
“You know why soldiers buzzed their heads in old wars?” X asked him.
Arlo turned, tightening the towel around his waist. The stab wound he had suffered in Rio de Janeiro wasn’t fully healed yet, but the stitches were out.
“I don’t recall, King Xavier,” he replied.
“So an enemy couldn’t pull your head back and slit your throat,” X said, tracing a line across his own scarred neck.
Arlo flipped a lock of hair over his shoulder, flinging water on Ted.
“Hey, man, what the hell!”
“Sorry,” Arlo said. He sat on a long wooden bench. “All due respect, King Xavier, but I’m going to have a helmet on out there, right?”
“Yes, but that’s not the point.”
“I still don’t know how a sword is going to do me any good against a machine.”
“It may not,” X said. “But there are more than machines where you’re going. Remember that Siren pit you fell into on your last dive?”
Arlo swallowed hard, and Ton and Victor gave him a hard look as X hit the showers.
Feeling refreshed, X walked back to his quarters in silence. Miles followed him over to his closet, where X pulled out his best shorts and slipped into his worn leather sandals. The two white shirts hanging on hooks were wrinkled, but the one thing in his small closet wasn’t.
“What do you think, boy?” X asked Miles.
The dog moved into the closet and sniffed the bottom of the leather outfit that Imulah had given X during the first days of his reign.
To be king, you must dress like one, he had said.
“Fuck that,” X mumbled.
It was the same reply he had given back then.
He left the closet and went over to the trunk at the foot of the bed. Miles sniffed the box eagerly, expecting a treat.
X opened the lid to reveal the only possession that had survived all his journeys. While he had lost most of his original Hell Diver armor during his trek through the wastes and his imprisonment by the Cazadores, he still had the main plate of his chest armor.
He placed it on the bed. After putting on a white button-down shirt, he added the chest plate. Turning, he checked himself in the cracked mirror on the wall.
“I look good?” he said, glancing down.
Miles’s tail thumped, and X laughed.
He went to his small desk, where he had placed Imulah’s book on the Outrider colony, but it was the second book from Imulah that he was interested in tonight. A faded gold cross marked the cover.
It was as old as X felt, with pages as creased and weathered as his scarred flesh. He had never felt much in common with religions, but tonight, he was going to use a line from this ancient book for the old-world ceremony that would unite Michael and Layla.
X buckled his captain’s sword to the duty belt at his waist. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he stopped in front of the mirror and made sure he didn’t have anything in his teeth. He even ran his fingernails through the thicket of eyebrow, then used scissors to cut any errant bristles. Satisfied, he went to work trimming his beard into shape.
At last, he wiped the mirror off and stared at his reflection.
He hardly recognized the man looking back at him. A new wrinkle had formed on his forehead, and his nose looked more crooked than before. And his short hair and beard now had more salt than pepper.
“You shouldn’t even be alive,” he said.
He and Miles left the room and walked with Ton and Victor to the sun deck where el Pulpo’s wives had once lounged in the sun while servants fed them grapes.
The servants were gone, as were the cages that once held Rodger and Miles captive. The rest had been transformed into a beautiful oasis.
Electric lights hung from the branches of trees. Four tables, each covered with a white cloth and set with dishes of fruit and vegetables, had been set up along the deck.
Voices came from the other side of the garden. X walked toward them, halting behind a tree when he saw Michael and Layla holding hands under a bower strung with lights. Several people waited in the shadows.
Layla looked beautiful in a white dress with flowers and a lace V-neck. Michael wore a black Hell Diver jumpsuit with the Raptor logo on the sleeves. Armor covered his chest. The ponytail was gone, shorn down to a crew cut. He had also shaved his baby face. Both were too busy talking with Imulah to even see X.
He stood there a moment, admiring the two kids. Even in their midtwenties, that was how he saw them. And they were about to start their own family now.
X drew in a breath, suddenly feeling more nervous than he did before a dive. A memory surfaced of his ninety-sixth jump, the day Michael’s father died with the rest of Team Raptor.
More memories flooded his mind: bringing Tin orange noodles while he put together a vacuum cleaner bot in their small quarters; finding the boy in the medical ward with his shiny foil hat after a storm.