She hoped this excursion would have a more positive outcome.
Malachi turned right, and they came upon a grassy training field with a squat building at its corner. He paused.
“What’s wrong?” Nomi asked.
Malachi shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. But it’s curious that no one is training. Every unit trains in the morning.”
“Let’s go see,” she said. She pulled against his grip on her elbow, drawing him forward.
They approached cautiously, though Nomi couldn’t say why. Maybe it had to do with the birdsong in the trees, and the peaceful quiet.
She imagined training grounds and garrisons were not often peaceful, quiet places.
“You’ll have to stay out here,” Malachi said when they reached the building’s heavy front door. “Women aren’t allowed.”
Of course they weren’t. But she didn’t like it. What if Dante was not as loyal as Malachi supposed he was?
And if that’s the case, what would you do?
So Nomi nodded meekly, playing her part, and remained on the walkway as he entered the garrison.
She studied the large, thick-trunked trees across the street, noticing the boy standing on the corner, his ball forgotten as he stared unabashedly at her. She gave him a tentative smile, which he didn’t return.
Malachi was back much more quickly than she expected, no Dante in tow.
“What happened?” she asked.
“No one is there,” he replied, confusion tightening his mouth. “No one in the whole building. They’re gone.”
A shiver slithered down Nomi’s spine. “Gone? But how is that possible?”
Malachi shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s no reason for them to leave, nowhere they would go. Unless…”
“Unless what?” Nomi asked. Suddenly, the quiet and birdsong didn’t seem peaceful so much as ominous.
Malachi looked around as if he might find the soldiers hiding in the shadows. His gaze stopped on the little boy pretending to play with his ball. “Unless Asa is amassing troops somewhere, for some purpose.”
Nomi hugged herself, her stomach churning. Why would Asa need to amass troops?
“Wait here for another moment.” Malachi jogged back to the corner and crouched before the boy. Nomi couldn’t hear what he said.
The boy shrugged. Shook his head. Scuffed his toe against the cobbles.
Malachi returned, passing Nomi and disappearing into the garrison. When he emerged, he was carrying a small, folded piece of paper. She stood silently, hands clasped demurely, as he handed the paper to the boy and ruffled his hair.
The boy grabbed his ball and took off, disappearing down the street.
“What was that?” Nomi asked when Malachi rejoined her.
He shrugged. “The child said he didn’t know where the soldiers went, but I think he was lying. I gave him a message for Dante, just in case.”
Nomi couldn’t ward off the crush of disappointment. “What do we do now? Wait in case they come back? Or will you go to Bellaqua and fight Asa alone?”
What would she do? Perhaps try to look for Renzo?
Their plan had hinged on Dante; without him, they had nothing.
Malachi glanced around the empty street, as if he might find the answer there. When he refocused his attention on her, his look was piercing.
“Lanos is not so far. We should visit your parents. Maybe Renzo has sent them a message revealing his whereabouts.”
“But—” Her brain stuttered to a halt. “But what about Asa?”
“I would like to wait a day or two for Dante, in case the boy delivers my message.” His voice softened. “And you’ve come so far. If your brother is nearby or your family is in danger, we should try to help them.”
Sudden tears pricked Nomi’s eyes. An odd feeling came over her, a strange twinge near her heart. “Thank you. I’m supposed to be helping you fix all of this. I don’t know why you want to help me.”
He gave her a long look. “You don’t?”
Heat rose to her cheeks. She couldn’t answer.
FIFTEEN
SERINA
SERINA COULDN’T SLEEP, so she spent the night standing watch outside Hotel Misery, with Ember’s silent presence and the quiet crackle of the torch they’d driven into the ground. All around the building, other women waited. Watched.
How could you murder them?
The argument replayed in Serina’s mind, again and again.
Your whole plan was to murder them. Or is it not murder if they starve to death?
Anika hadn’t backed down from her decision, not for a split second. Serina had watched closely, and the girl had never once faltered.
“These guards were a risk,” Anika had said when Serina confronted her. “They were eating our food; they were drawing more and more of our fighters to keep watch over their worthless lives. If Nero and Diego had gotten the chance to let them loose, they would have surely killed more of us, maybe found a way to signal the boat. They were a threat. And your plan was for them to die anyway. At least they went fast at my hands. I don’t think they would have preferred to starve.”
“No,” Serina had argued, her heart pounding in her temples. “I was giving them a chance. Leaving them here on the island to fend for themselves is not the same thing as murder. I was giving them more than Commander Ricci ever gave us. And I was saving you.” She gestured to the women holding the firearms. “I was trying to save you from this moment, when you have to face the knowledge that you stared an unarmed man in the eyes and ended his life. This wasn’t a fight for survival. It was a calculation. It was murder.”
Anika put her hand on Serina’s shoulder, turning her so they met eye-to-eye. “I didn’t need you to save me from this. You needed me. This wasn’t a call you were ever going to make.” Her gaze flicked to Val. “And it needed to be made.”
She patted Serina’s shoulder. “We’ll take care of the bodies. If you want to use the prison as a trap for Nero and Diego, we can. Or we can close it down and regroup at the Hotel. Up to you.”
Serina had stood there as Anika asked her for the keys, as the women had unlocked the cells and dragged the bodies of the guards into the hall. She’d stood in silence when Mirror said quietly, in passing, “These were not good men, Serina.”
When Val and Serina were alone, she’d turned to him.
“I wanted to give them a chance at survival,” Val said softly.
She remembered Diego grabbing her hair, Carlo and Hector gleefully threatening to kill her. The guards sitting above the fights, betting on which girls would die. Bruno trying to violate her and, later, trying to kill her.
She remembered the boat Nomi had arrived on, with only two guards and how Val had chosen not to kill them and take the boat.
Anika had wanted to kill the guards from the beginning, but Serina had stopped her. She’d said it was because they might need them for leverage or information. But how much had been because of Val?
Had Serina failed the women of Mount Ruin because Val was her blind spot? Doll and a handful of other women were dead. If Serina had allowed the guards to be executed right away, those women would still be alive. There would have been no threat, no fear on the island while they waited for the ship.
Now Nero and Diego were out there stalking them.
“Mirror was right,” she said slowly. “The guards hurt so many of the women here. And Anika was right too. They were your blind spot, so they were mine as well. Nero and Diego have killed so many girls.…” She trailed off. “Their blood is on our hands.”
“I’m so tired of all the blood” was all Val said. And then he went to help with the bodies.
Now Serina stood watch as dawn bled up from the horizon.
“The ship could come as early as today,” she said to Ember, trying to shift her thoughts to a more productive task. Reliving last night wouldn’t help anyone. “Are we ready?”
Ember cracked her knuckles as she mentally
took stock. “Don’t know about the girls with firearms, but physical training has been going well. Shouldn’t be much of a fight, I hope.”
“If it’s a normal prison boat with the normal number of sailors and guards, it should be easy.” Serina glanced down the path. In the morning, she’d send lookouts to keep watch for the boat. She’d send many. Not so much for the boat, but to protect themselves from Nero and Diego.
If the guards killed their lookouts, they wouldn’t know when a boat was on its way.
“We should practice at the pier. We need to figure out how to get everyone in position fast enough.” Today, maybe tomorrow. This nightmare will be over soon.
Unless Asa had changed the whole system somehow. Unless he’d stopped sending women to Mount Ruin. It was a possibility Serina had never entertained.
When dawn had broken fully over the island, Serina and Ember left the prison compound and gathered everyone not on watch in the run-down lobby of Hotel Misery.
“We need to shift from training to preparations for our travel,” Serina said, loud enough so all could hear her. “No more hunting, target practice, or search parties. I want you to bring all your belongings, food stores, everything you can down to the infirmary. It’ll make it easier to access. When that boat comes, we’re going. We can’t give Nero and Diego a chance to stop us.”
A flurry of activity answered her announcement. She sent a team to take Lion and the others to the volcano. Then she pulled Anika aside. “Get all the markswomen together. I want to head to the pier and practice our approach.”
Anika nodded and hurried away. When she returned, Serina was surprised to see Maris among the markswomen.
“Are you sure?” Serina asked her.
Maris raised her chin, and as her hair fell away from her face, so did the shadows; her eyes no longer looked so haunted. “I’m ready to do my part.”
Serina smiled. “I’m glad to hear it.”
She tracked down Val in the infirmary. He gave her a small, sad smile when he saw her, but neither of them acknowledged their conversation from the night before.
“Can you pull a couple of groups together to collect water?” she asked. “We need to fill every flagon we have. Water will be our most precious cargo on that ship.”
He nodded. “There are some empty barrels in the compound we can use as well.”
“Good,” she said. “We need everything ready. We can resupply as needed if the boat is late.”
He turned to go, but she called out to him. He paused.
“Don’t go out on your own,” she said. “To Diego and Nero, you’ll be a desirable target.”
He gave her hand a quick squeeze. “I’ll be careful.”
She watched him for a moment as he walked away, then she returned to the markswomen. “When we get the signal from our lookouts, we’ll have a very small window to take position without being spotted by the men on the boat. So we’re going to practice getting into location right now, for as long as it takes.”
A few of the girls nodded.
Serina and Ember led them down toward the pier.
“Feels like the boat is taking a long time,” Ember said. “Maybe a magic has trapped all of us here, and we’ll walk these same paths and worry about these same guards forever.”
Serina glanced sidelong at the older woman. Ember never talked much except to bark out commands during her training sessions. She wasn’t prone to flights of fancy.
“It does feel like it’s been a long time. Almost two weeks, I think,” Serina replied.
“They seemed to come one on top of another before,” Ember said. “When we knew they meant food and death.”
“How long have you been here?” Serina asked, wondering how many fights Ember had seen. How many she’d won. The woman’s face and body bore a map of scars, some faint, others thick silvery ridges. Ember was a force, and Serina couldn’t deny she was still vastly afraid of her.
“I don’t know how long,” Ember said, her strong legs taking giant strides down the path. Serina struggled to keep up. “After the second year, I stopped keeping track. I’ve won in the ring six times.”
“Six…” Serina breathed in disbelief. Sometimes it hit her all over again how many women had died here. For every one of Ember’s victories, four other women had died. Twenty-four women, just in those six fights. Eleven women in the fights since Serina had come to Mount Ruin. The numbers were staggering.
“Oracle was here longer. She was the first person I met on Mount Ruin.” Ember’s voice thickened slightly, but her stony expression never changed. “She won ten fights. One of them was for me. I was sick on the day of my fight—bad boar or something—and she volunteered to fight in my place. She wasn’t leader yet, back then. Afterward, she spent three days nursing me back to health, hoarding my portion of the rations so I would have something to eat when I felt better.”
It was the most Ember had ever said to Serina. And it broke her apart. By the time Serina had come to Mount Ruin, Oracle had been hard, all iron and barbed wire. But she obviously hadn’t started that way. And maybe she’d never been as ruthless as she’d seemed. She’d yielded when Petrel had made a similar request to help Serina. She’d told Serina of her history as a Grace. Oracle had kept so many of the women here alive. She’d saved Serina’s life.
She’d deserved to escape more than any of them. Oracle should not have died on Mount Ruin.
“You and Oracle saved my life,” Serina said softly, those final moments playing over in her mind. “You made all of this possible.”
Ember shifted her shoulders uncomfortably. “I told Oracle we should fight. I convinced her. And then she died.”
All the air left Serina’s lungs.
“I thought maybe she and I could be free of all of this. I dreamed of escaping together.” Ember slowed as they approached the cliffs above the pier. She looked out over the water, and her voice bottomed out. “Now I’m not sure I want to leave.” She turned to Serina. “If I don’t die here, if my body doesn’t get committed to the volcano, do you think Oracle and I will be able to find each other?”
Serina felt Ember’s agony like a sword to her chest. “Yes, yes I do” was all she could say.
As the rest of the women gathered behind her, the cracks in Ember’s armor disappeared. Her jaw hardened, and her eyes turned to flint.
Serina had a hard time putting the conversation from her mind, even as she and Ember worked out where each markswoman should stand. Some they ranged along the cliff, in the deep shadows where the sailors wouldn’t see them. They asked a couple to hide among the scrubby trees above the pier as lookouts for Nero and Diego. Then they had the girls on the cliff fire a few shots toward the pier to check range and aim.
“The escaped guards will hear those gunshots,” Ember said.
“Good,” Serina said. “We want them to know we’ve got weapons and know how to use them.”
Serina surveyed their trap. She ran it through her mind. Boat arrives; no guards come to meet it. The sailors come on shore, look around a little. Our markswomen take them out.
And if Nero and Diego make a move, the girls will shoot them too.
She walked the pier, turned to look up at the cliffs. Could she see the women hiding there? The glint of weaponry. One pink-cheeked face stood out.
She made a mental note to tell them to use mud or dirt to darken their skin.
Even with the morning sun shining against the rocks, it was difficult to make out the figures. That was good. Usually the boats came in the afternoon, when the sun had passed over the cliffs. There’d be more shadows then.
“All right, I’d like you all to head back to the compound and wait there. I’ll sound the alarm. Let’s see how long it takes to get into position.”
Serina ran the women through their paces until late afternoon. The signal of an approaching boat—three loud shouts of aiee, aiee, aiee—carried well, but if the wind picked up, it might be harder to hear. So she set Anika and another of t
he girls as lookouts.
“Instead of shouting, I want two gunshots if you see a boat,” Serina said shortly. “One if you see the guards. Preferably in one of their hearts.”
“I won’t let them ruin this for us,” Anika said. Her dark eyes drilled into Serina’s. “We are getting off this island.”
Serina nodded. She didn’t always like Anika’s methods, but she did appreciate the girl’s determination.
Serina, Ember, and the other markswomen hiked back up the path. The air was more humid than it had been the past few days, and the breeze was picking up, whipping Serina’s hair against her cheeks.
She wondered if Nomi had made it to Porto Rosa yet. Had she and Malachi found the regiment loyal, as Malachi had hoped? Was Renzo keeping himself alive?
The air thickened gradually, clinging in her throat. The volcano would be active today.
Serina’s nose wrinkled. No. The smell was wrong. The air didn’t burn with sulfur and iron; it smelled more like a campfire, like woodsmoke.
“Do you smell that?” she asked Ember. Had one of the girls built the cook fire early, and too big?
Wordlessly, Ember pointed.
Serina craned her neck in the direction Ember indicated, toward the heart of the island. A strange glow permeated the area. It was larger, closer than the caldera.
Serina quickened her pace. The prison compound was quiet. Without the guards or weapons there, they’d shut up the building. No one guarded it anymore. Still, it was eerie to see it this way, its blank, barred windows staring.
The smell of burning wood got stronger.
Serina began to run.
She, Ember, and the markswomen thundered into the clearing before Hotel Misery. Here, all was not quiet, though it still had an element of the macabre. Women were running everywhere.
“What’s going on?” Serina shouted, securing the attention of Mirror, who was hauling a half-empty bag of food out of the infirmary.
Queen of Ruin (Grace and Fury) Page 12
