Grief shadows his eyes, but he gives me a tiny smile. “Using my own words against me is low.”
“You know I’m right.”
“I know you’re convinced you’re right.” He glances again at the men who swim toward us with sure, steady strokes. “And I know that it’s your choice.”
Turning back to me, he meets my gaze. “And this is my choice. I’m going with you. I’m going to get on the boat while you distract them. You’re right—it isn’t enough to warn Logan. The tech still has to be destroyed, and we’re going to do it. You can be a warrior, Rachel, but you don’t have to do it alone.”
His fingers squeeze my wrist once more, and then he sinks below the surface of the river and lets me go. Instantly, I splash my way toward one of the pillars, plaster myself against it like I’m terrified that if I let go I’ll drown, and start yelling for help.
Boots crash against the planks above. The trackers already swimming toward the dock aim for me. Seconds later, hands grasp my arms and pull me onto the dock. I lie there, shivering and coughing as if I’ve swallowed too much water. Two of the men who are still dry kneel down, flip me to my side, and pound my back. The trackers who were in the water heave themselves onto the dock, panting.
I don’t look for Quinn as the trackers who were pounding on my back hoist me onto their shoulders and carry me up the ramp. I don’t look for him as the rest of the trackers make their way onto the dock, leading the donkeys, carrying salvaged supplies, and pulling Heidi on a narrow wheeled bed that belongs to the boat’s medical bay.
But after we’ve set sail—after the steam whistles shriek and the giant paddle wheel at the back of the boat begins churning the water—as the last faint drops of sunlight gleam fiery orange against the Wasteland, I lean against the railing on the lower deck and take comfort in the fact that even though I’m at the mercy of my enemies, I’m not truly alone.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LOGAN
“What’s taking her so long?” Adam asks as he spreads pine needles to cushion the ground beneath his bedroll. “The light is almost gone. If she doesn’t hurry, she could get lost. Or hurt. Or both.”
We’ve stopped for the day on a flat circle of land sheltered on one side by the sagging, moss-covered remains of a farmhouse and ringed by tall pines and clusters of flowering bushes. The Commander, along with Peter and Gregory, are staking out the perimeter, choosing the best sites to set up the evening’s watch. Orion, the third guard, is busy setting up the Commander’s small tent in the center of the camp. My people are scattered around, setting up their bedrolls, foraging for food, or, in Willow’s case, backtracking through the treetops, searching for signs that the trackers who’ve been following us on foot are close enough to be dangerous tonight.
The horses are tethered on a small patch of grass to the west of the farmhouse, their saddles lying ready a short distance away in case we need to flee. Not that most of us can saddle a horse quickly, but we’re faster at it now than we were four days ago when we began the northwest trek toward Hodenswald.
Adam lays his bedroll on the pine needles and then stands beside me, his fingers tapping a jerky rhythm against his leg. His nervous energy is spilling over onto me, and I carefully examine the trees around us, though I know there’s no point. Willow will return when she returns.
“It takes time to search for signs left by trackers,” I say quietly while I spread my own bedroll out and then grimace as Connor flaps his bedding, catches it on a shrub, and yanks it free, snapping off a small piece of the bush.
“Four days of travel and Mr. Big Words still doesn’t know how to lay a blanket on the ground without announcing our presence to the trackers behind us. Thanks for that.” Orion, the short, burly guard whose face still bears a bruise from our encounter in the Lankenshire tunnels, shoves Connor as he walks past us, sending the boy crashing into the bush.
“Idiot,” Adam snaps at Orion. “Now you’ve broken half of the branches. The little piece might have been overlooked, but this? This is a red flag.”
Orion turns toward Adam, a scowl on his face, and I thrust myself between the two before another fistfight—their third in the past four days of travel—can break out between them.
“That’s enough.” I keep my voice calm and measured. Adam takes a step back, but Orion sneers.
“Look at these people taking orders from you like a pack of trained sheep. What else do you have them do for you, Logan?” His eyes wander past us to land on Nola, who is gently cleaning her father’s wound while Drake leans his head against a tree, his eyes screwed shut against the pain. Nola was able to find plants to disinfect the arrow wound in his leg, and another plant to help promote healing, but we don’t have anything that can dull the pain. Nola used the plants on my stub of a finger, too, but there was nothing left to clean. The cauterized flesh is a lumpy, blackened scar that aches so often, I’ve willed myself to ignore it because it’s a problem I can’t solve.
Drake suffers the pain of his own wound without complaining, though his face is pale and sweaty every time he has to climb up and down from the horse he shares with Nola, and he can’t put weight on his leg without the help of the crutch Frankie fashioned from a thick oak branch.
I’d offer him the use of Melkin’s walking staff, but if he were to drive the tip too deeply into the ground, it would set off an infrasonic signal to call the tanniyn. Not only am I anxious to avoid the fire-breathing beasts, the staff is the one piece of tech I have that the Commander doesn’t know about. Melkin told Rachel the staff was a gift, and there’s no way the Commander would possess tech with the power to call the tanniyn and then give that tech to someone else. Melkin was tasked with a trip to Rowansmark after Jared’s disappearance. It’s possible that my father, desperate to rescue me once he realized his original device never made it back to the Commander, gave Baalboden’s new courier the staff instead.
However Melkin came to own it, I’m grateful that Connor agreed to pretend the staff was his in order to keep the Commander from questioning its existence. Now he wears it strapped to his back when he rides, and keeps it beside his bedroll while he sleeps, and I ignore it in favor of working on a way to replicate the original controller with the scant tech supplies I have left.
I snap back to reality as Orion looks away from Nola and leers at Jodi instead. “I bet you got your eye on that little piece of pretty, don’t you? She ain’t too busy with her father, and she ain’t climbing trees and pretending to track things at all hours of the day.”
Jodi, finished with laying her bedroll beside Nola’s, bends at the waist to dig some nuts and herbs out of her pack. My pulse hammers as Orion says, “Yeah, you got her trained, don’t you? You got her visiting you in the middle of the night—”
My fist connects with his jaw, and he stumbles back even as I lunge forward. I snatch the front of Orion’s tunic and shake him. His eyes blaze, and he spits in my face. Adam slams into Orion from the side, ripping him out of my grasp, and they both hit the ground hard.
Before I can react, Connor draws his sword, places his boot on Orion’s wrist, grinding it into the ground to stop him from taking another swing at Adam, and says, “You would do well to mind your tongue around the ladies in our camp.”
“Or what? You’ll flap your bedroll at me?” Orion asks, as he shoves Adam off him. Adam gives me a look asking for permission to punch Orion once more, but I shake my head. The Commander and his other two guards, while content to ignore yet another fistfight between Adam and Orion, began moving toward us the second Connor pulled his sword.
Connor’s voice is cold. “Leave the ladies alone or else I will be forced to call you out on your dishonor and duel with you accordingly.”
“I don’t know what you just said, but I do know that drawing your sword against a member of the Brute Squad
is asking for pain.” Orion glares at us, using his free arm to push at Connor’s boot.
“He said if you disrespect the women in our camp, he’ll run you through with his sword,” Adam says helpfully.
“Let him up.” The Commander’s voice is sharp as he stalks toward us. “And give me one reason why I shouldn’t sever your tendons and leave you for the carrion birds to feast on.”
Connor slowly removes his boot, and Orion scrambles to his feet, his face flushed red, his fists clenched.
I open my mouth to intervene on Connor’s behalf—to say something that will stop whatever violence I’m sure the Commander has planned—but Connor beats me to it.
“As an official emissary of Lankenshire, I represent the triumvirate while on this journey. These people”—he gestures toward everyone but the Commander and his three guards—“are now Lankenshire citizens, and as such are under the protection of our leaders and our laws.”
The Commander’s eyes narrow, and his scar twitches.
“However, I recognize that this man is under your jurisdiction, not mine, and therefore I humbly beg your pardon for not bringing my complaint about his behavior to you, instead of acting in the heat of the moment.” Connor manages to sound both contrite and unyielding, a skill I’m certain he learned from his mother.
“Are we talking about complaints now?” Orion’s voice is surly. “Because I have a list of my own. Starting with the fact that you don’t know the first thing about traveling without leaving a trail and ending with the fact that drawing your weapon because I looked at a girl—”
“You looked at her with dishonorable intent.” Connor raises his chin, and suddenly seems every inch a leader. “Miss Jodi, Miss Nola, and Miss Willow are under the protection of Lankenshire.”
“Appreciate it, but I can protect myself,” Willow says as she drops out of a tree to the right of us and lands softly beside Adam. “And apparently, so can you. Nice work pinning his wrist with your boot.” She smiles at Connor and then looks at Orion. “What have you done now?”
His eyes narrow as Adam’s arm wraps around Willow’s waist. “Just suggesting Logan share some of what he’s getting with the rest of us, but I see he already has. Always did wonder what Tree Girl tasted like.”
Adam lets go of Willow and jumps for Orion, but Frankie gets there first. Shoving himself between Orion and the rest of us, he looms over the guard and snarls, “I remember when you were nothing but a snot-nosed little brat always whining to your mama whenever someone didn’t let you have your way. You’re still whining, only this time, your mama isn’t here to stop me from delivering the beating you deserve.”
“You think you can beat me?” Orion sounds incredulous, which, given the size of Frankie’s arms and the fury on his face, doesn’t speak highly of Orion’s common sense.
I glance at the Commander, expecting him to intervene on Orion’s behalf, but he’s staring at his guard with a cold expression on his face.
“This isn’t Baalboden,” Frankie says. “You can’t drag me off to the dungeon if I look at you wrong. This is the Wasteland. If you push me, you’ll learn that I’m not the same man you used to know. I have a new leader. New friends. And nothing to keep me from ruining you if you bother Willow, Nola, or Jodi again.”
Willow stares at Frankie the way she often looked at Quinn—like she’d fight off an army for him because he’s family now.
Gregory and Peter step closer to Orion, their hands on their sword hilts, and I lay a hand on Frankie’s shoulder. His muscles bunch beneath my touch, but he slowly moves away from Orion without breaking eye contact with the guard.
I look past Orion to find the Commander watching me closely, his eyes narrowed as Smithson and Adam also obey my signal to disengage from the fight. Orion starts to say something, but the Commander cuts him off.
“This is finished.” His voice is hard. “Everyone back to your jobs.” He looks at Willow. “Any sign of the trackers?”
I’m not sure when the Commander decided Willow’s skills made her worth treating with a bare modicum of respect, but his ability to put his team’s survival ahead of his own prejudices when it matters is going to work to our advantage when we have to convince the other city-states to give us troops.
“Not anywhere close.” Her eyes are locked on Orion. “The horses are giving us the advantage in speed, but they’re also making it impossible to leave a clean trail behind. If the trackers decide to push themselves to travel by night as well as by day, we’re in trouble.”
The Commander sweeps the group with his gaze. “Double the guard shifts. Use two-hour increments. We leave before dawn.”
We begin to disperse, and the Commander snatches Orion’s cloak and spins the guard around to face him. Leaning close, he says, “If I ever see a man of mine taken down by an untrained boy again, I will drive my sword through his useless chest and invite the beasts of the woods to rip him apart limb from limb.”
“But I—”
“Cooking duty, three days. Trail sweeping, four days. And if that doesn’t motivate you to be better at what I’ve trained you to do, then I will kill you where you stand.”
Orion’s mouth snaps shut, and he looks at the ground. The Commander shoves the guard away from him, turns on his heel, and stalks toward Peter to join him in guarding the southern perimeter.
I take my ration of nuts, dandelion, and rabbit jerky and move to sit near the horses for the first shift of guard duty. Smithson sits nearby, though he doesn’t really speak to anyone. Maybe he’s been like this since we left Lankenshire. Maybe he’s been like this since Sylph died, and I was too busy trying to keep everyone alive to notice.
Either way, tonight isn’t the night to pry into his thoughts. I imagine they’re filled with missing Sylph. With the ways he wishes his life was different. And since I’m part of the reason she’s gone, I must be the last person he’d like to share his memories with.
Besides, I have memories of my own to consider as the first stars pierce the sky, and the horses whicker softly to one another.
Like the fact that the last time I saw Rachel, she was weak from her injuries and struggling to handle the sheer weight of the grief and horror of the last few months. I should be with her. I should be holding her when she wakes from her nightmares.
She’s facing Ian alone, and she shouldn’t have to. He’s my brother. This mess started nineteen years ago with my father. Rachel shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of that, but I can’t save her from it. Not yet.
I know she can take care of herself. I know it. But that doesn’t make it easier to imagine her alone in Rowansmark, surrounded by a bunch of fanatics who all believe in pain atonement.
And it doesn’t make it easier to face each day without her by my side.
I miss Rachel. In my darkest moments, a voice in my head whispers that she might be gone forever. That no matter what I do, no matter how fast I travel, I won’t catch up to her in time. That she’ll die at the hands of my brother the madman, and I’ll be left with the terrible emptiness that threatens to consume me whenever I consider a future without her.
Nothing can fix that. It’s the one scenario for which I have no backup plan.
I have a lot of promises to keep—promises to deliver justice to Ian, to stop James Rowan, to take down the Commander—but the one promise that means more to me than all the rest is my promise to always find Rachel.
There is no best or worst case scenario for Rachel. There is only finding her before it’s too late.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
LOGAN
Hodenswald comes into view in the late afternoon of our fifth day of travel. Compact buildings in sturdy brown brick hug the ground behind a thick wall studded with stocky turrets that blend into the hills behind the city. The gate is plain, the field surrounding the city has be
en ruthlessly trimmed, and the sun gleams off a row of long metallic weapons fixed in regular increments along the wall. Hodenswald looks like a well-muscled warrior who has no intention of hiding his nature behind the pretense of decorative landscaping and fancy stonework.
“There it is,” I say, because silence has stretched between the Commander and his Brute Squad and the rest of us for the better part of the afternoon, and it’s time someone broke it. Even to say something painfully obvious.
“It’s rather ugly, isn’t it?” Connor asks with forced cheerfulness in his voice. “It reminds me of a freakishly large dog guarding a bone.”
“It’s serviceable. Not every city feels the need to sparkle.” The Commander brushes past us and moves his horse into the lead.
Orion laughs and bumps Connor hard as he passes by. “Get it? He said that because the stone in Lankenshire sparkles.”
“Does it really? Allow me a moment to gasp in surprise. You’d think after living there for eighteen years I’d have noticed.” Sarcasm barbs Connor’s words, but Orion doesn’t seem to hear it.
Gregory is another story. He urges his horse forward, ducks beneath a low-hanging oak branch, and reaches Connor’s side. “Better watch yourself,” he says quietly. “You’re in over your head here, and Logan won’t always be around to run to your rescue.”
“Then I shall endeavor to rescue myself.”
Gregory’s laugh is ugly. “You? You’re a puny excuse of a boy who has to use a big vocabulary because you don’t know how to use a sword.”
Connor abruptly reins in his horse and turns to face Gregory. His dark eyes are steady, but something burns within them. “Never mistake a man’s intellect for weakness.”
Gregory shakes his head, mutters “Useless,” and moves on.
“Maybe if you didn’t sound like a walking library all the time, they wouldn’t keep singling you out,” Willow says as she spurs the horse she shares with Adam and moves abreast of Connor’s mount.