Anika closed her eyes and let the sunlight dance across her face. “Right now,” she said, “I’m just happy to be moving. This is the first time I haven’t felt imprisoned, maybe in my whole life.” She opened her eyes and turned to Serina. “I want my sisters to feel this way.”
Serina gave her arm a brief squeeze. “I know.”
She moved to the wheelhouse, where Gia stood at the ship’s wheel, white knuckled, her face a twist of concentration.
“How long do you think our journey will take?” Serina asked.
“Two days, give or take,” Gia said. “We can’t move too fast with this large a cargo, but we’ll get going a little faster as the fire burns hotter. We should have more than enough coal to get us there.” The worried look she’d worn since they’d first arrived had eased; it was amazing how much more relaxed all of them were now. They’d all shed years—the tense gray complexions of constant terror had been replaced with a hint of bright-eyed hope.
Serina was about to lower herself down the ladder to check on Val when they rounded the western point of the island and the full wide ocean spread before them.
Gia gasped, frozen at the controls. Serina’s hopes crumbled to dust.
Five ships. No, seven. Flying the Superior’s flag.
TWENTY-FOUR
NOMI
NOMI WALKED THROUGH Lanos City with her head down. Not like a woman, she hoped, but like a man who had no time or patience for interruptions. The hood hid her hair, and the night hid her face.
She had been to the Lanos City train station only once, when she and her siblings had departed for Bellaqua. In the dark, the streets lost their familiar colors and sounds. She couldn’t find the corner market with its bins of orangey-pink peaches and rich brown chestnuts, where they’d turned left, or the shop-lined street with the old man who sang and played an organetto near the entrance to the station.
Instead, she found a piazza filled with wrought-iron tables and old men drinking wine, their boisterous voices and expansive gestures undeterred by the chill midnight air. Nomi faltered. Should she ask one of these men for directions? Perhaps it was best to test her disguise now—if they saw her for what she was, despite the cloak and darkness, there was no way she could fool anyone at the train station.
She was about to step into the piazza, when a handful of soldiers spilled into the clearing from a side street. The men at the tables stopped talking as soon as the thud of boots sounded on the pavement. They buried their faces in their wine glasses. Nomi stepped back into the alley, out of view. Breath held, she listened and prayed the soldiers wouldn’t come this way.
They asked the men something—only a few words filtered through the dark: seen… the Superior… questioning. Were they looking for someone?
What if they were looking for Renzo?
Nomi’s legs trembled. Heart pounding, she backed down the street away from the piazza. She couldn’t ask directions, couldn’t draw attention to herself. If those soldiers were looking for someone, they’d take a close look at her, and that was dangerous.
She’d walked several blocks in what she thought was the wrong direction, and was beginning to consider hiding in a doorway until dawn so she could ask for help without raising suspicion, when a strident whistle pierced the air.
A train whistle.
She fixed the sound in her mind and chased it, practically running. The streets were dark, lit only by the moon and streetlights placed so far from one another that she felt like a frog attempting to hop between bright stones, only to fall each time into the deep.
At last, she turned down a narrow lane bordered by squat brick buildings and there, at its end, was a wide piazza and the soaring edifice of the station. She hurried through the main archway, clutching her cloak close to her body and darting glances around, worried more soldiers would appear.
The train station was just as she remembered: large and echoing, with tall girders and the constant stench of coal and thick haze of steam. There were few travelers this late at night, and the lack of bustle gave it a hollow feel.
A few men and women shuffled through the large ticketing area, but only the rumble of male voices filled the lofty space. That, and the click-clack of the departures board. Nomi looked up—there were two trains to Bellaqua listed. One was an express that left just before dawn, the other the six-day regional train she’d taken with Serina and Renzo. It didn’t leave until midday. Renzo and Malachi would surely see her waiting for it when they came for the train to Porto Rosa.
Nomi took a steadying breath. Then she headed for the ticket counter.
Her hand tightened on her cloak. A man walked by her, almost close enough to brush her arm. Could he tell what a fraud she was, how obviously she was trying to disguise herself?
She couldn’t bring herself to glance back to see if he paused or turned to look at her.
When she reached the counter, an older man with heavy white brows and a bulbous red nose asked for her destination.
“Bellaqua,” she croaked.
“Regular or express?” He stared down at his timetable.
“How much’s the express?” Nomi asked, praying she had enough. She thought of her father hoarding this money, the money he’d been paid for her life. Why hadn’t he spent it? Why hadn’t he told Mama she didn’t have to work anymore, or looked into buying Renzo a bride? She wished, more than anything, that she could ask him.
“Eight golds,” he said. “Two golds, ten silvers for the regular.”
Nomi drew out the collection of coins from her pocket and stared down at the glint of gold. She had little sense of the cost of things, never having been allowed to carry or spend money. But even so, she knew eight golds was dear. It was the reason they’d taken the slow train the last time, and why she’d assumed Renzo would need the full six days to travel to Bellaqua before the ball.
But there were far more than eight gold coins in her hand, even after leaving most of the money with Renzo, so she paid for the express. Whatever reason her father had for keeping the money, she was sure he’d never imagined Nomi would use it to avenge his death.
“The express leaves at five. Platform two. You’ll arrive in Bellaqua tomorrow morning, just after eight.” The man took her money and held out the ticket, and then called for the next customer in line. He never once looked at her face.
Nomi was so she relieved she could have cried. Instead, she cleared her throat in what she hoped was a manly fashion and stomped away from the counter.
Then she looked for platform two.
She followed signs, testing her luck once more at a kiosk selling espresso and pastries. She found a bench, settled back into the voluminous folds of the cloak, and shoved two pastries into her mouth, one after another. She ate because she knew she had to, because she needed her strength and a clear head to survive this journey, to execute her plan. But the sugar and fat sat heavily in her stomach after more than a week on the austere diet of Mount Ruin and the sailboat. How quickly it had forgotten the rich food of the palazzo.
A train left the station a few minutes later, and then it was quiet for hours. Nomi dozed uncomfortably on her bench. A man swept stray leaves and trash from the cracked tile floor. A few drunken voices echoed to the vaulted roof, but no one bothered Nomi.
Near four o’clock, a train pulled in with a shriek of brakes and a cloud of steam. Men in fine clothes disembarked, interspersed with a handful of women, their gazes fixed to the floor demurely. Nomi wanted to jump up and scream at the women to run, to escape, to fight back.
But the truth was, most of them didn’t look unhappy. They didn’t cringe away from their husbands or brothers or fathers; they didn’t frown or fidget.
Nomi remembered how Serina had taught her to smile, even when she seethed inside. She remembered Mama’s lessons on the importance of masks.
Contentment was a hard emotion to fake, and yet she saw it everywhere.
Mama had been content, Nomi thought. She might not have wanted thi
ngs in Viridia to change. She’d loved that Serina had been chosen as a prospect. She’d been as ambitious in training Serina as any man would have been. Nomi had never seen any hint that it bothered her to have her wages paid to her husband, or her body broken down by the long hours at the factory.
Nomi didn’t know how to resolve her feelings—the anger, the resentment—with that contentment. She couldn’t judge her mother for not wanting more. But she couldn’t be happy that her mother never got to see Serina liberate an entire island of women either.
Nomi had seen Serina as a prospective Grace, and she’d seen her as a warrior.
Warrior Serina won. And now Nomi would become a warrior too.
No, not a warrior.
An assassin.
A new throng of people swept onto the platform, and suddenly, there in front of Nomi, a whole group of soldiers appeared. They surveyed the platform with narrowed eyes, and her heart plunged to her feet.
Trying not to be obvious about it, Nomi pulled the hood even further around her face and crossed her arms over her chest, bending her head as if she were napping, as Malachi had done on the coach.
Nomi’s breath came in small, silent gasps, and it took all her strength not to flee. She kept her eyes closed, to preserve the illusion of sleep and because she couldn’t bear to see them come toward her, to see her deception laid bare.
A loud voice echoed across the platform. “Well, hello there, flower. Aren’t you a vision?”
Nomi’s eyes snapped open. A soldier stood in front of her, but his attention was directed toward a girl waiting with her father a few feet away. The other soldiers whistled and made kissing noises.
“The Superior likes sweet young faces like yours,” the soldier said, approaching the girl. The child. He grabbed her chin, forcing her to look up at him. Her body shrank at the same time, cringing toward her father.
Nomi watched in disbelief.
The girl’s father stiffened. “She’s fourteen,” he said in a low voice. “Not nearly old enough—”
The soldier made a dismissive noise. “The Superior decides who is old enough to be a Grace. It is an honor that your daughter will be considered.”
“Please,” the man said, more quietly.
The flame of Nomi’s anger flared to life. The father was begging.
The soldier put his large, heavy hand on the girl’s shoulder. “What’s your name, flower?”
She was shaking too hard to answer.
Nomi thought she might be sick. She looked around. Someone would do something. Why wasn’t anyone doing anything?
She saw a few faces turned toward the spectacle, a couple of frowns. But no one moved.
The Superior’s power is absolute.
These men, all the people on this platform, would let the soldiers do whatever they wanted. After all, the soldiers were the Superior’s men. They carried his power in their hands.
“Her name is Talia,” her father said softly. “We are on our way to Silver City to visit her uncle, who is ill.”
“Well, now you’re on your way to Bellaqua. Isn’t that nice?” The soldier pulled the girl toward a bench and sat her down. The girl never cried. She didn’t scream or try to get away. And that broke Nomi wide open inside.
The soldier jerked his head toward the shiny black train. “Go on, Papa. Your train to Silver City is about to leave.”
The father stood frozen in the middle of the platform. A cloud of steam gave him an insubstantial air, as if he were becoming a ghost right then and there. But his agonized eyes never disappeared into the haze. He wasn’t honored to have his daughter ripped from him and taken to the palazzo. This wasn’t how Graces were chosen. This was a travesty.
A tragedy.
And Nomi couldn’t bear it.
The train whistle blew. In the silence afterward, she stood up, pointed to the far end of the platform, near the engine, and yelled in a low, gruff voice, “There’s someone on the tracks!”
Every soldier turned to look at her.
She kept pointing and ran a few steps closer to the train. “I saw him fall! Did no one else see him? He’ll be crushed!” Fear and urgency coated her words. Maybe that would sell the lie. The fear was certainly real.
The soldier holding on to the girl glanced toward the train’s engine, now belching steam with exuberance. The tracks disappeared into a cloud of dirty white. The wheels started to turn.
“Hurry!” Nomi yelled, in desperation. “Save him!”
Her throat threatened to close. Her gambit wasn’t going to work. She couldn’t breathe.
And then, to her amazement, someone down the platform started yelling too. The soldiers turned as one and jogged toward the front of the train.
Nomi ran to the girl and grabbed her arm. She pulled her to her father and pushed them both onto the train. “Hurry, hurry,” she murmured, forgetting to pitch her voice low.
The wheels started to churn, and with a great rumble, the train slowly moved forward. But the soldiers were running back this way. They were yelling at the conductor to stop the train.
Nomi’s heart pounded in her ears.
Panicked, she leapt onto the train after the father and daughter and shoved the door closed behind her. She watched from the window as the soldiers milled around angrily, shaking their fists at the train as it rapidly gained speed.
It hadn’t stopped.
The conductor hadn’t heard.
Nomi didn’t breathe until they’d passed beyond the end of the platform and on through the outskirts of the city.
A hand touched her arm. Nomi turned, expecting to see the father’s haunted face.
Talia stood before her, eyes wide. In a soft voice that shook with emotion, she whispered, “Thank you.”
Nomi rode to Silver City. There, she switched trains for another express to Bellaqua. She’d arrive later at the palazzo, not until midday the following day, but her impulsive gesture hadn’t cost her much in the end except a small delay.
It was worth it for Talia’s smile. The girl’s father said nothing during the journey, didn’t even acknowledge Nomi, who huddled into her cloak at the back of the nearly empty carriage. But Talia smiled at her when they disembarked, and her father kept her protectively curled into his side. He retained the haunted look of someone who’d almost lost everything.
In the Silver City train station, Nomi bought a meat pie, a bottle of mineral water, and a small book of stories at a kiosk. On the train to Bellaqua, she slumped in the back of the sleep carriage and read her book.
She had never read openly before, without the fear of discovery weighing heavily on every word. And now it actually helped, adding authenticity to her disguise. Here in the quiet darkness of the sleeping car, the occasional snort or snore the only sound, she could let her gaze move across the rough pages, shaping letters and words, distracting her from the finality of her destination.
All through the night she read, until she reached the end of the book. Then she ran through her plan, over and over again in her head. It had a beginning, middle, and an end.
Find the bakery, sneak into the basement, find the tunnel. Go to Asa’s room. Kill him with Serina’s knife.
Nomi thought there was a chance she might actually succeed. It helped that Asa didn’t know about the passageways. But she wasn’t trained. She wasn’t really an assassin. She was sure Asa would raise the alarm, or one of his soldiers—Marcos maybe—would be in the room. Even with the secret tunnel, she knew it was unlikely she’d escape. Marcos would kill her, or Asa himself would. Maybe they would die together, their matching mortal wounds a poetic sort of justice for all the plotting and betrayal.
As the train clattered into Bellaqua, Nomi stared out the window and thought about endings. About Asa’s last breaths, and her own.
TWENTY-FIVE
SERINA
THE NIGHT AND the rim of the island had hidden the Superior’s ships, but now Serina could see them racing forward in horrifying detail.
&nb
sp; “I can’t outrun them.” Gia groaned. “We’re too heavy—”
“And we can’t fight,” Serina murmured, reality clawing up to choke her. They’d left most of their knives and spears behind, and there was no ammunition left for the firearms, which they’d only brought to trade in Azura anyway.
Serina ran out onto the open deck. What could she tell these women, who’d put so much trust in her? Horror rippled through the women quickly, as those close to the bow spotted the ships and passed the news to those in the stern.
“What do we do?”
“What can we do?”
“How stupid to think we could be free.”
Serina’s heart broke again and again.
Within minutes, the Superior’s ships penned them in. Soldiers threw ropes and cinched the boat to its brothers before Serina could even begin to consider a defense. From all sides, firearms were raised and waiting.
One of Jungle Camp’s fighters screamed and leapt the gunwale toward the soldiers, her makeshift spear held aloft. They shot her and shoved her body into the ocean. Unlike the men who’d arrived on Mount Ruin, these soldiers didn’t pause. They didn’t blink.
Serina stood with Ember and Anika, every scrap of joy, every ounce of determination draining from her. She racked her brain for a way to fight back. But she was frozen.
She stood dumbly as they shackled her, stared blankly as they beat Val senseless for betraying his fellow guards. Fox jumped overboard before they could bind her. She didn’t know how to swim. The other women watched, some screaming, as she bobbed along the side of the boat and eventually disappeared beneath. Deep down, deep inside, Serina screamed too. But the numbness held her captive, trapping all the outrage, all the fear, all the horror. She couldn’t breathe.
They didn’t try to move the women to the other boats. The soldiers just took command, steering the ship away from Azura and back to Bellaqua.
Everything they’d suffered and all they’d fought for had been for nothing. There would be no escape, no rallying of reinforcements in Azura. There would be no battle for Viridia’s soul. Serina had given every one of these women hope, including herself… and it had been an empty promise.
Queen of Ruin (Grace and Fury) Page 18
