by Halie Fewkes
I approached the entrance boulders cautiously, comforted by the sounds of the Travelling Baking Show livening the mountain. But we climbed inside and my heart plummeted at the sight of five men in white cloaks, seated around a table with four furry dogs lying at their feet, death hound not included. They spoke in melodic Icilic as Kit’s voice grew louder, telling a story while the other four laughed with him.
Maverick had already spotted me, and he finished chuckling at Kit’s tale before mouthing across the room somebody’s in trouble.
I yelped as a hand fell on my shoulder and Corliss met me with a grin. “Hey, Archie’s looking for you.” I froze for a moment, knowing the Zhauri would follow me if I left the Wreck. Maverick could probably already tell I had Ebby’s location.
She squinted at me and said. “Now. He needs you right now.”
I nodded quickly and glanced at the cave that would take me to Archie’s room.
“And Liz, we need you back to help with dishes,” Corliss said as Liz squinted at me. Corliss clapped loudly and said, “Alright team, break!” She shoved me toward the tunnel and Liz toward the Baking Show. I strode with purpose, but felt a new sense of dread as I glanced back to see Corliss walk boldly to the Zhauri table and pull up a chair as they began rising to their feet.
“It’s dawned on me that I haven’t introduced myself,” she told them with a grin, always one for shock. “My name is Corliss, and I’m embarrassed to realize I haven’t yet invited you to experience the joys of tabletop dancing.”
I reached the tunnel and ducked from sight before peering back into the Wreck. I wanted to dash away, but I couldn’t tear my gaze off Corliss in all her insanity.
I strained my ears to listen, even as the Zhauri stared at her in surprised silence. Maverick spoke in Icilic, and Iquis fixed his intense, lopsided stare onto Corliss. Her confident smile faded in a hurry.
Kit set a hand on her arm, and each of his words came iced with his thick accent as he threatened, “If I see your teeth again, funny girl, I will see to it you swallow every one of them.”
Corliss, never one to miss a joke, pulled her lips over her teeth and said, “Alright, I can take a hint.”
The new, blond one laughed openly and Kit narrowed his dark eyes. “Leave,” Kit said, “and be grateful you are funny.”
Their pitch black dog with white paws perked his ears in my direction as a voice behind me demanded, “What are you doing?”
I flipped around to see Jesse, and scoffed loudly. “What I always do, Jesse. None of your business.”
“What’s wrong with your face?” he asked.
That had to be the pettiest insult in history, and I rolled my eyes before striding past him in calm ignorance, urging myself not to run from the real danger. If the Zhauri wanted to pursue me, running would just make me look guilty.
I glanced anxiously back to make sure they weren’t following, but just saw Jesse turn straight around and head for Tarace’s study, the snitch. And from the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something stuck to my left elbow, a stray hair or piece of lint. I brushed at it, then tried to pick it off and felt a gentle tearing sensation creep up my arm.
I had just pulled off a long, translucent strip of my own skin.
I pounded on Archie’s door then shoved it open as he grabbed the handle to pull. I charged inside as his surprise became worry.
“Archie, I just saw the Zhauri in the Wreck and now I’m… molting! I look like a snake! Like I’m half Human, half Escali, and half snake!” I gestured to the foggy edges of skin peeling away from my arms and face. “What did they do? Have you ever seen anything like it?”
I peeled a strip of skin from the top of my shoulder to the bottom of my elbow and watched it drift softly through the air, my stomach a bind of panic.
“Alright, I see it. Would you mind not doing it on my floor?” Archie grabbed his waste basket to plunk down between us as my jaw fell open in disgust.
“And don’t look at me like that,” he said, his eyes amused. “You’re not dying. This is the Tally version of a sunburn. Your skin has already repaired itself and is getting rid of the dead layers. It’s not pretty, but you’re going to be alright.”
I could hear the laughter in his reassurance, and I felt a flush of embarrassment flood into my face at how incredibly ignorant I was. I could have puzzled this out if I’d just put a little thought to where I’d been all day.
“Oh,” I muttered, knowing this might become the next campfire song if word of it ever reached Corliss. “Well… Sorry for molting on your floor then.”
Archie laughed a full, deep laugh from the pit of his stomach. I was ready for a lifetime of mockery to begin on the spot, but he brushed my idiocy off and asked, “You ran into the Zhauri?”
“I more… ran past them,” I said. “Maverick mouthed across the room that I was in trouble, but they haven’t followed me here. At least not yet.” I glanced at Archie’s door and said, “We should leave before they get the chance.”
Archie shook his head and said, “They’re like Escalis, Allie. Running from them is the surest way to make them chase you.” He also glanced nervously at the door before asking, “How was talking to Tarace?”
“He’s speaking with the other city leaders right now, convincing them to take the deal.”
Archie gave me a low whistle of amazement, and started to say something else before his door was thrown open with a frightening thud against the wall.
“Oh, how hot the fire in which you play,” Sir Avery snarled, his jaw trembling with terrible anger. The veins in his neck bulged like he was ready to tear someone apart. “I just spoke with Tarace,” he spat. Oh shanking life. “Did you think for one second I wouldn’t find out about this?”
“I… hoped maybe you would understand,” I said, jittery with fear as the Epic huffed like an enraged ox. “Listen, I know you want your daughter back—”
“And I know what you think, that I only want her because she’s powerful. You are wrong, you stupid Tally. She’s my daughter, and Avalask cannot keep her from me.”
I scrambled to find words that might placate him. “It’s not about that,” I said slowly. “We’ll make a deal so you can see her, but we have to think about the thousand other kids—”
“I don’t care about those other kids! Where did you find her?”
“Hang on,” Archie said, coming to my defense. “We happened to run into her. We still don’t know where Prince Avalask keeps her hidden.”
“You shut up,” Sir Avery fumed, “and you show me where you found her.”
He held a hand out to me and I tried to skip back, already at the edge of Archie’s bed.
“You are awfully bold,” I said, growing sicker. “Nobody gets a free pass into my mind.”
“I’m Sir Avery. I get what I want,” he replied. I felt thoughts prodding at my own thoughts, and I responded with an angry flash of lightning in my hands and eyes. Anywhere I could feel an intruding influence, I shocked it senseless, feeling sizzles in my head everywhere I decimated a tendril of thought. I threw my palms to my skull as Archie grabbed my shoulder, erecting a sudden wall of safety between my mind and Sir Avery’s. The Epic’s invading presence vanished in a flash.
Archie had never shielded me before, and I could tell he was angry by the tight grip of his fingers, but he remained calm and reasonable on the outside. “Listen, we went to Dekaron with every intention of bringing Ebby home, but things—”
Archie jerked me back to throw both hands in front of us as Sir Avery flicked his glowing fingers, but the Epic’s burst of red light hit the wall, and it crumbled away to reveal a long, open tunnel.
The tunnel was wrong. We should have just been looking into the room of Archie’s closest neighbor, but my jaw dropped as two people ran past the opening. One was Tral, the Escali we’d just released. The second was a girl with her blonde hair tied back, dashing by on long, strong legs with sandals laced to her knees.
“What are you d
oing?” I whispered as the long tunnel disappeared, replaced by a clear view of the Wreck.
“Nothing to harm your health,” Sir Avery replied, his furious glare replaced by one more sadistic. “Just throwing a few illusions around for the Dragona’s entertainment.” People crowded around the tables in the Wreck, eating food and laughing with their friends, and my heart stopped as I saw myself seated at a table with all my Tally friends who had taken no care to cover their arm spikes.
“These are real? People can see them?”
“They’ll see juuuust as soon as they look,” Sir Avery said in lingering amusement. “And I wish you luck, convincing eye-witnesses you haven’t been collaborating with Escalis. I’ll be among the first to recommend a ten thousand year sentence for your crimes.”
The Wreck disappeared and I saw one more vision of myself strolling casually across the sparring field with Prince Avalask.
“Ok, stop,” I said, swallowing my angry pride. I was better off giving Ebby’s location to Sir Avery than waiting for the Zhauri anyway. “We found her down with the Dincaran kids, alright?”
“There are three yous milling about the Dragona right now,” Sir Avery said, lazily holding up three fingers. “So I’m going to need three more things worth my while.”
I took a quick breath and glanced at Archie to make sure he wasn’t telling me to shut up, but I only saw loathing and bitter resignation in his eyes. “The Dincaran kids have been working on an escape plan—”
“An obvious conclusion, and not helpful to me,” Sir Avery cut me off. The Wreck came back into view on the wall and a few people began to glance sideways at my group of Tally friends.
“No, you don’t understand. It’s a good plan,” I persisted. “Ratuan’s got the cave split into sections where they’ve been training , and they’re breaking for freedom in two days—”
“Boring,” Sir Avery said, yawning cruelly.
“—and he wants you to come talk to him because they’re trying to kill Izfazara on the way out.”
Malicious interest lit Sir Avery’s eyes, and he put a finger down. The group of Tallies in the Wreck disappeared before I was watching myself outside, walking casually and chatting with Prince Avalask.
“Savaul wants to speak with you too,” I said, panicked even though I couldn’t see anybody else near the sparring field.
Sir Avery sneered and asked, “Why would Avalask’s brother want to see me?”
“He says he wants to help bring Ebby home. He’s even willing to introduce himself to you.”
“See? This isn’t so hard,” Sir Avery said, putting a second finger down. The Allie and Prince Avalask on the sparring field turned to smoke and disappeared, but one more me was running through the tunnels with Tral on their way out of the Dragona.
“What else do you want to know?” I demanded.
“What else is worth knowing?” Sir Avery asked, sickly playful.
Jesse, none other than shanking Jesse, caught a glimpse of myself and Tral running by his connecting tunnel. He tilted his head uncertainly, then trotted after them to investigate.
“Better find something,” Sir Avery said as Allie and Tral rounded a corner and stopped running so Jesse could catch up.
What else was relevant?
“Ratuan has Ebby in the palm of his hand,” Archie said as Jesse made it to the end of the hall, nearly to the corner behind which I was standing with Tral. “She says what he wants her to say and does what he tells her to do.”
Allie and Tral evaporated into nothingness right as Jesse came around the corner, one second from being face to face with the two, and Sir Avery cocked his head as the wall returned to its normal rocky self.
“What makes you say so?” he asked.
“We’ve seen it,” I said flatly.
“I’d like to see it too,” Sir Avery said, holding a hand out to me. I had the overwhelming urge to dance back again and spit at him, but it would be an idiotic mistake I couldn’t afford.
Archie held me back by the shoulder, and I set a hand on his to mutter, “I’m alright,” before I stepped away from his protection and grabbed Sir Avery.
I thought back to seeing Ebby down with Ratuan, but Sir Avery didn’t merely share the memory with me like in the past — he reached into my mind, grabbed a thick handful of my thoughts, and brutally ripped them out.
I screamed as my knees buckled beneath me and Sir Avery grabbed my shoulders with crushing strength to keep me standing. If thoughts could bleed, my blood would have been spattered around the walls of Archie’s room.
I could hear Archie’s snarled words, but more than that, I could feel my memories being directed to everything I knew of Ratuan’s planning. Sir Avery stripped away copies of all I knew, and I gritted my teeth to suppress a cry as my heart lurched in fear of what this could do to my mind. I couldn’t start over. Not again.
“I still put up with you, Tally, because you once looked out for my daughter when I couldn’t. But she is not,” he hissed, “staying with Avalask.” His breath was hot on my face as he growled, “Learn your place. My heart will not ache if I need to be done with you entirely.”
Sir Avery reached into my front pocket and snatched Sav’s spider-webbed envelope.
He let go of me to rip the letter open, and I barely got my hands out to soften the impact of crumpling to the floor. Sir Avery’s eyebrows rose further with each line he read, and he shot me one last look of disgust before muttering, “Teach the two of you to betray me...”
He leapt into the air, and vanished as I threaded my fingers into my hair and pressed my hands to my skull. I closed my eyes and tried to isolate the pain, but my brain felt like it had been grated, sanded, and left to scab over, resulting in the sharpest headache I’d ever endured.
“Allie?” Archie whispered beside me on the floor, his voice choked.
“We have to get Jesse,” I groaned as my head throbbed. “He saw me.”
“It’s alright. We just have to prove Tral is in the Everarc Cave. Jesse will have nothing.”
“Tral’s already gone,” I said. “If Jesse accuses me of letting him out and Tarace isn’t here to vouch for me…”
I heard Archie sit up and imagined he was tugging at his own hair too.
“I can go take care of Jesse,” he said. I nodded and felt two of Archie’s hands grab one of mine. “Don’t move. I’ll be back.”
I nodded again, smaller this time, because every movement hurt.
I just lay still after he left, feeling ashamed Sir Avery had pulled information from me that wasn’t his to take. That made me weak, and not the secret keeping vessel I wanted to be. Logically, I knew shame was the wrong response, but I felt it all the same.
I also couldn’t help but wonder… How was Archie planning to take care of Jesse? He could try to talk him down or… kill him… But Archie wasn’t a killer. Maybe he would tie Jesse up and hide him somewhere until all of this was over.
The morality of that option didn’t concern me as much as… well, where would he put him?
I pressed my palms to the rock floor, pushed myself to my feet, and despite the lingering headache, I pulled myself together. He was going to need help.
I stumbled into the hall and glanced either way down the abandoned tunnel. If Jesse went to Tarace, he would find him gone, and the next best thing…
The Zhauri. He probably hated me enough to take this to the Zhauri.
Prince Avalask had mentioned that the five hunters lived in the northeastern caves, which made sense because they were the nicest the Dragona had to offer. I headed northeast in the familiar tunnels, hoping Jesse didn’t know the Zhauri were in the Wreck. I was almost to the Zhauri’s quarters when I heard Archie’s voice ahead, low and urgent.
“She’s a traitor, and she deserves ten thousand years for it,” Jesse hissed back. “And you’re probably going down with her, unless you can convince everyone you’re an idiot and she played you. Now get out of my way.”
“You have n
o idea what you’re talking about,” Archie said. “You saw an illusion, Jesse. That’s all it was.”
“I just ran to the Everarc Cave, and all four doors were open. The Escali is gone, Archie, and it’s because she let him out.”
I rounded a corner and saw loathing light Jesse’s eyes at the sight of me. “Listen,” I said, the perfect image of calm, “Tarace gave the order to let the Escali go. Take this to him, Jesse, not the Zhauri. He’ll explain.”
Jesse just sneered. “So one of you tells me I saw an illusion, and the other says the Escali was released on Tarace’s order?” I could see by the way he was glancing between us, he was about to try something.
“Just ask Tarace,” I said. “If you take this to the Zhauri, you’ll start a chain reaction that’ll get me hurt or killed.”
“Isn’t it great?” Jesse asked, pure triumph on his face. “All I have to do is scream, and the Zhauri will hear me. You can’t escape them, and who knows what they’ll do to you before they hand you over for Time. We all know what they’re famous for.” Archie’s fingers twitched as Jesse jeered, “And who ever thought I would be the one to catch you?”
Archie looked like a contained storm, and he shot me a stone-cold look that asked if I was ready to witness a murder.
I said flatly, “The Zhauri aren’t here. They’re in the Wreck.”
“Good,” Archie replied.
Jesse’s eyes widened, and he grabbed a knife off his side as Archie whipped around to punch him in the gut. Archie grabbed his arm in two places and twisted it behind his back, catching Jesse’s knife from the air before it could clatter to the floor.
Archie shoved him into the wall with the blade at his throat and snarled, “Don’t test me, Jesse. Nobody’s about to wander through this section to save you. Get it?” Jesse just stared at me in shock, making no move to get away and no sound above his ragged breathing. “Now listen for a second, will you? We need her to stay here,” Archie pointed his free hand at me but kept his eyes on Jesse, “for reasons I am not about to explain to you. All that matters to me, is finding a way to shut you up.”
