She rolls her eyes. “I yank out the wires on the left side of the transmitter and then rip out the silver mechanism. It’s not hard, Logan.”
“Actually, it’s a very delicate process requiring precision and careful—”
“It requires me to know my right from my left and to pull out some wires.” She pats my shoulder and moves toward Adam. “We’re good. Meet you back here before dawn.”
“Be careful,” Jodi says. “You don’t want to run into a tracker.”
Willow flashes a dangerous smile. “No, the trackers don’t want to run into me.”
Seconds later, she and Adam leap, landing lightly on the neighboring roof. The fact that the buildings in Hodenswald are so close together is going to make this task much easier to accomplish.
“Ready?” I ask Jodi. She nods and moves to the western lip of the roof. I stand beside her and assess the jump. “Take a running start and aim for a spot at least two yards beyond the edge. You’ll be fine.”
“I know I will.” Her voice shakes a little. I can’t blame her. If she falls, if any of us fall, we won’t be getting back up. She’s the shortest in our group. I worry that her legs aren’t long enough to give her the kind of distance she’ll need, but she was adamant about coming, and if being around Rachel has taught me anything at all, it’s that if a girl has made up her mind to do something, there’s no point standing in her way unless you prefer to have your dignity, and possibly your nose, ruined.
“I’ll go first so that I can catch you as you land.”
“Okay.” Her blue eyes are huge as she looks from her feet to the opposite roof.
“Just keep your eyes on me, and you’ll be fine.” I back up a few steps, run at the edge, and leap, my eyes fixed on a spot two yards past the lip of the opposite building. I don’t hit my mark, but I do land safely past the gap that separates the two homes. Turning, I reach my arms out and say, “Run and jump. Don’t look down; it will ruin your aim. Look only at me.”
She takes a few steps back, raises her eyes to mine, and starts running. Seconds later, she lands lightly in front of me. I grab her arms to steady her, but she’s already found her balance. She grins.
“That was fun.”
“I’m glad you think so, because we’re going to do that all night long.”
It takes us seven leaps to get to the first building with a beacon attached to its eaves. I can’t reach the tech by crouching down and leaning out, so Jodi lies on her stomach and eases over the edge of the roof while I hold on to her ankles. There’s a sharp, metallic pop, and then she says, “Pull me up.”
I help her wiggle her way back onto the roof, and she hands me the beacon. Quickly, I detach the back of the metal casing and use the soft glow of the moon to examine the transmitter inside. It’s the same as the beacon I disabled in Lankenshire—ultrasonic frequency on the right, infrasonic on the left. I figured they’d be the same, but still . . . knowing that I gave Willow the correct instructions eases the knot in my stomach.
I carefully pull the wires on the left free from the transmitter and then snap the silver mechanisms that were set to the correct infrasonic frequency used to call the tanniyn. The beacon is now useful only to keep the monsters at bay.
My fingers slide gently over the powerful transmitter as I call up my memory of the map Amarynda drew for us. There are beacons approximately every seventy-five yards. A transmitter of this size is capable of sending out a signal for at least five hundred yards. Rowansmark must have put so many beacons in place to compensate for the possibility that a battery might die or a frequency might get corrupted. Or because they needed something strong enough to drown out the signal every leader wears on a chain around their neck.
The bottom line is that Hodenswald doesn’t need all of the transmitters they currently have in order to repel the tanniyn. My best estimate, calculating the size of the city and leaving room for some transmitters and batteries to fail, is that the city needs no more than twenty-eight beacons up and running on the western half. They currently have thirty-five. That leaves seven extra transmitters.
Seven might be just enough to help me build the circle of destruction I need to take down the Commander.
I slip the casing back into place and lower Jodi again until she can snap the beacon back onto its mooring. While she works, I run through the map of the city in my head, looking for places where I can remove a transmitter without creating a weakness in the blanket of anti-tanniyn ultrasonic frequency.
By the time Jodi’s finished, I’ve picked the locations and am ready to move. We creep to the southern edge of the roof and assess the next jump, scanning the buildings laid out before us. Twelve jumps south, two jumps west, and another four jumps south will bring us to the next beacon. That’s if the roofs remain equal in height. Those that are too high or too low will need to be circumvented, which will cost us valuable time. Already the moon is in the midpoint of its journey through the sky.
My legs tense, ready to leap forward, when Jodi snatches my arm and pulls me into a crouch.
“Look down,” she breathes.
Carefully, I lean forward until I can see over the bricks and down to the street below. A dark shadow huddles on the street corner, just outside the glow of light from one of the hanging gas lanterns. I squint and try to figure out what I’m seeing. For a moment, I’m almost convinced that the shadow is nothing—a crate of trash, perhaps. A barrel of spare rainwater. But then the shadow shifts, and a sliver of moonlight illuminates a pale face before the shadow eases farther back against the wall behind it.
That brief glimpse is enough to make my breath come faster as I push back from the edge and look at Jodi. “It’s Sharpe. The tracker who was with Lyle when he first received us.”
“Maybe that’s his regular post?”
I study the buildings, but they’re so uniform, it’s impossible to tell what they are. Maybe he’s standing guard outside an important government building, but why would he? Unless he’s worried we’ll try to break in for some reason, but if that’s the case, why wouldn’t he just wait inside where it’s comfortable? Maybe he’s watching the streets to make sure the citizens of Hodenswald aren’t trying to mess with the beacons.
But if that’s true, then why didn’t he say something when Jodi hung over the edge of the building and removed the tech?
“I don’t think so. Something else is going on. Good catch.”
She shrugs. “Rachel taught me to always treat my surroundings as if everything wants to kill me.”
“Good advice,” I say, and swallow the ache at the base of my throat. I hope Rachel is taking her own advice.
We watch Sharpe in silence for several moments. It’s hard to keep my eyes on him because he sits so still, he’s nothing more than an absence of starlight on a street that is already dark. When he shows no sign of moving, I signal Jodi to move to the opposite side of the roof with me.
“We’re going to have to go around him.” I examine the rooftops around us. “It’s going to add a few extra jumps, and we’re already running short on time.”
“We can hurry.”
“We aren’t going to hurry the jumps. I don’t want us taking any chances there. We’ll just have to disable the beacons faster.” I take a moment to think through the map. “We’re going to do three jumps north, cut to the east four jumps, and then head south to the next beacon. We’ll have to cut back west at some point, but this way we can go around Sharpe.”
“Let’s go,” she says.
I estimate it takes nearly twenty minutes to make our way to the next beacon. I lower Jodi, and she quickly grabs the tech. This time, I don’t pull the wires free. Instead, I remove the entire transmitter and slide it into the inner pocket of my cloak. One transmitter stolen. Six to go.
When Jodi raises a brow at me, I say, “I’ve run the calculations. Hodenswald doesn’t need all of these to be protected. And I have use for them.”
She doesn’t argue. Quickly, we replace the tech
and head south again. It takes nearly two hours to alter twenty-nine more beacons and steal two more transmitters. We only have four more beacons to go. We’ve fallen into a rhythm. Run, jump, examine the streets for problems, assess the next jump, and then start all over again. At this rate, we’ll easily finish and be back inside Lyle’s home before dawn.
We hit the roof that holds the next beacon and head for the eaves. Jodi lies on her stomach. I grab her ankles and brace my boots against the lip of stone at the edge of the building. Then, she inches her way over the side and jackknifes at the waist in order to reach the tech. The beacon comes free of its moorings, and then I hear something that freezes the breath in my lungs—the soft thud of someone landing on the roof behind me.
I whip my head around and find Sharpe stalking toward me, his expression a mask of cold, ruthless authority, his sword already in his hand.
“Don’t bother pulling her up,” he says. “You’ll be dead before you can draw the breath to tell her she’s next.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
CHAPTER TWENTY
LOGAN
“Brace yourself!” I yell. Pushing my feet against the stone ledge, I haul Jodi up far enough that she can reach back and grab the top of the roof with her arm. Letting go of her ankles, I flip over into a crouch in time to see Sharpe skid to a stop in front of me, his sword already falling toward my neck.
Lunging forward, I slam into his knees, and send both of us flying onto the rough, gritty stone beneath us. He raises his sword arm and slams the hilt into my face. Pain explodes across my cheekbone, and I throw myself to the side to avoid the next hit.
Sharpe rolls with me, his sword flashing past my head in a swing so powerful, I can feel the breeze as the blade slices the air. For one second, the momentum of his missed strike keeps him off-balance. I ball up my fist and punch him in the jaw.
It’s like punching the side of a wagon.
He shakes off the blow, and raises his sword arm again. I pull my knees up to my chest as his blade falls toward me, plant my boots on his stomach, and kick as hard as I can.
His sword nicks me as he skids backward. Fewer than five yards separate us. I lunge to my feet, and he does the same. Yanking my sword out of its sheath, I raise it and face him down even while I listen for evidence that other trackers might be closing in.
I don’t hear anything, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t coming. Somehow, Sharpe followed us through the city. Somehow, he knew to come up to the roof. If he knows, others might know, too.
I need to end this soon, or we aren’t getting off this rooftop alive.
“How did you find us?” I ask.
The cold ruthlessness of his expression has nothing on the viciousness in his voice. “When you expect people to behave like criminals, you take precautions in case you need to follow them later.”
I remember the way he stared at me when we first met Lyle. The way his hand slapped my shoulder and held on tight while he asked me if we’d met. The way his fingers pressed too hard against the neckline of my cloak before he let me go.
“You put a tracking signal on me, didn’t you?”
“You’ve led me on quite a chase tonight. Couldn’t figure out why I was getting a ping off your signal but couldn’t see you on the streets.” He circles me, slowly edging closer. “Took me a while to figure out I needed to move to the rooftops.”
His sword flashes, and I parry, spin, strike, and parry again before we break apart. The power of his blows reverberates up my arms. He’s better than good. He’s an efficient, well-trained machine with more experience and more strength than me.
“Why would you think to put a tracking signal on me in the first place?” I ask, mostly to buy myself a little breathing room. His swordsmanship is superior to mine. Maybe if I keep him talking, I can find a chink in his armor to use to my advantage.
He sneers as we dance around each other, looking for openings. “Liars always have the same tells. You and the Commander? You’re both liars.”
I sidestep a swing and slap the flat of my blade against his back as he passes. My face hurts like I ran cheek-first into a wall, and blood is steadily dripping off my jaw.
“I never lied to you.” I slide to the right to mirror his movements. In the corner of my eye, I see Jodi move away from the edge of the building.
Sharpe jumps forward, his sword slicing toward my chest. I block the blow, but his leg lashes out and sweeps my feet out from underneath me.
I hit the ground and roll, but he’s already on me. He lands with a knee in the middle of my back, grabs a fistful of my hair, and yanks my head back, exposing my throat.
“You lied,” he says while the moonlight gleams along the length of the blade he’s raising toward my throat. “I recognize you. I can’t place how I know you, but we’ve met. And you lied about it. You made sure you kept strong eye contact with me while you did it, too. You’re smart enough to realize that liars usually glance away as they lie, but not smart enough to know that the really good liars try too hard to look you in the face.”
“We’ve never met. If we had, you’d be able to place me. But I know why I look familiar to you,” I say because his blade keeps coming closer. I can only hope that by telling him a piece of the truth, I’ll intrigue him enough to give me an opportunity to kill him.
“Why is that?” His tone makes it clear he thinks I’m telling him another lie to buy myself more time.
He’s almost right.
“Because I was born in Rowansmark to Marcus and Julia McEntire.”
His sword freezes in midair, though the grip on my hair doesn’t lessen. “You’re the lost McEntire boy?”
“Yes. The Commander kidnapped me when I was a few days old. I was raised in Baalboden. I didn’t know who I really was until recently.”
He removes his knee from my back and twists me around to face him. Bringing the length of his sword beneath my chin, he studies me in what’s left of the moonlight. Two yards behind him, Jodi crouches, her eyes locked on me, her expression a mix of calculation and defiance. She’s going to intervene. Try to save me. And if she does, Sharpe will kill her.
Sharpe is going to kill her anyway if I can’t find a way to defeat him.
Jodi presses her palms into the stone and looks from me to the edge of the roof on her other side and then back to me again. I blink, and she repeats herself. Me—the edge of the roof—me again.
“I can see it,” Sharpe says, and I quickly meet his gaze before he realizes Jodi is a scant two yards behind him, clinging to the roof just inches before the building ends and the long drop to the ground begins. “You resemble your mother.”
“You knew my parents?”
“Marcus was the one who recruited me into the tracking program. He was a good man.” Sharpe’s tone hardens. “Which doesn’t explain why his son is on a roof stealing the tech Marcus worked so hard to build.”
I can’t tell him we’re disabling the tech, and he’d never believe we were simply curious and decided to do a midnight rooftop dash through the city to pry open a few beacons and peek inside. Time to become what he’s accused me of being all along: a liar.
I frown. “What are you talking about? This is Hodenswald tech.”
He leans forward and says softly, “Every city-state has either signed the protection agreement with Rowansmark or has been destroyed. Your leader himself admitted he understood that our presence here is to protect against a tanniyn attack. You know what these beacons are for. Lie to me again, and I will kill you.”
“You’re going to kill me anyway.”
His smile dries the spit in my mouth. “Lie to me again, and I will kill you slowly.”
Jodi gestures behind Sharpe, and I let my eyes glance off her as I scan my surroundings. Two yards between Sharpe and Jodi. Inches between Jodi and a long, fatal fall.
I jus
t have to tell the truth long enough to find an opportunity to take advantage of Jodi’s position.
“Okay, fine. I know what they are. But you have plenty here. A transmitter that size? You’ve got this city covered and then some. I figured I could lift a few transmitters without anyone noticing.”
His sword doesn’t waver. “You thought wrong. What do you need the transmitters for? Planning on using our own tech against us?”
It’s hard to deliver a scornful laugh with a sword at my throat, but I try. “Why would I do that? I’m from Rowansmark, remember? If the Commander hadn’t intervened, I’d be wearing a tracker’s uniform right now.”
The truth of that statement sits uneasily in my thoughts, and I push it away. “But he did intervene. He kidnapped me, stole the life I was supposed to have, and dumped me on the streets of Baalboden when I was six, after having my adoptive mother killed.”
“A tragic story.” Sharpe’s voice is pitiless. “But still not an explanation for the theft.”
“Don’t you see? I hate him.” My tone is as ruthless as his. “I hate him. I hate what he did to my family in Rowansmark. I hate what he did to the people I cared about in Baalboden. Everyone I’ve lost, everything that’s gone wrong, can be traced back to him.”
I drop my sword and raise my hands to show him that I’m not a threat, and then I slowly reach my left hand into my cloak pocket and pull out one of the stolen transmitters.
“The Commander, like all city-state leaders, wears a necklace to ward off the tanniyn. The transmitter inside that necklace is powerful enough to keep the beasts away from an entire city, which is why you needed so many beacons up, right? You needed enough transmitters to make sure you could override the leaders’ signals if you needed to call the Cursed—the tanniyn.”
He nods and watches me closely. I keep the transmitter in my hand, but raise my arms again in a posture of surrender.
“I know enough about tech to be able to amplify the signal in these transmitters. I only took a few. It shouldn’t greatly affect your signal strength inside the city.” Except for the fact that the only signal they’ll be sending out is ultrasonic and therefore useless to Rowansmark’s purposes. “I just needed enough to overpower the Commander’s necklace.”