Still, snow blasts against the windows of my transport, obscuring the world outside. There are no more windweavers from the talented House Laris. They’re either dead or gone, having fled with the other rebelling houses, and the Silvers remaining can only do so much.
From what little I can see, Rocasta carries on despite the storm. Red workers move to and fro, clutching at lanterns, their lights bobbing through the haze like fish in murky water. They’re used to this kind of weather so close to the lakes.
I settle down into my long coat, glad for the warmth, even if the coat is a bloodred monstrosity. I glance at the Arvens, still clad in their usual white.
“Are you scared?” I chatter to the empty air. I don’t wait for their nonexistent response, all of them quietly focused on ignoring my voice. “We could lose you in a storm like this.” I sigh to myself, crossing my arms. “Wishful thinking.”
Maven’s transport rolls ahead of mine, spotted with Sentinel guards. Like my coat, they stand out sharply in the snowstorm, their flaming robes a beacon to the rest of us. I’m surprised they don’t take off their masks despite the low visibility. They must revel in looking inhuman and frightening—monsters to defend another monster.
Our convoy turns off the Iron Road somewhere near the center of the city, speeding down a wide avenue crisscrossed with twinkling lights. Opulent town houses and walled city manors rise up from the street, their windows warm and inviting. Up ahead, a clock tower fades in and out of visibility, occasionally obscured by drifting gusts of snow. It tolls three o’clock as we approach, gonging peals of sound that seem to reverberate inside my rib cage.
Dark shadows plunge along the street, deepening with every passing second as the storm gets stronger. We’re in the Silver sector, evidenced by the lack of trash and bedraggled Reds roaming the alleys. Enemy territory. As if I’m not already as deeply behind enemy lines as possible.
At court, there were rumors about Rocasta, and Cal in particular. A few soldiers had received a tip that he was in the city, or some old man had thought he’d seen him and wanted rations in exchange for the information. But the same could be said of so many places. He’d be stupid to come here, to a city still firmly under Maven’s control. Especially with Corvium so close by. If he’s smart, he is far away, well hidden, helping the Scarlet Guard as best he can. Strange to think that House Laris, House Iral, and House Haven rebelled in his honor, for an exiled prince who will never claim the throne. What a waste.
The administrative building beneath the clock tower is ornate compared to the rest of Rocasta, more akin to the columns and crystal of Whitefire Palace. Our convoy glides to a halt before it, spitting us out into the snow.
I hustle up the steps as quickly as I can, drawing up the infuriating red collar against the cold. Inside, I expect warmth and a waiting audience to hang on Maven’s every calculated word. Instead, we find chaos.
This was once a grand meeting hall: the walls are lined with plush benches and seating, now pushed aside. Most have been stacked on top of one another, cleared to make room on the main floor. I’m seized by the scent of blood. A strange thing for a hall full of Silvers.
But then I see: it is not so much a hall as a hospital.
All the wounded are officers, laid out on cots in neat rows. I count three dozen at a glance. Their liveried uniforms and neat medals mark them as military of varying ranks, with insignia from any number of High Houses. Skin healers attend as fast as they can, but only two are on duty, marked by the red-and-silver crosses on their shoulders. They sprint back and forth, seeing to injuries in order of seriousness. One jumps up from a moaning man to kneel over a woman coughing up silver blood, her chin metal-bright with the liquid.
“Sentinel Skonos,” Maven says gravely. “Help who you can.”
One of his masked guards reacts with a stilted bow, breaking rank with the rest of the king’s defenders.
More of us file in, crowding an already-crowded room. A few members of court abandon propriety to search the soldiers, looking for family. Others are simply horrified. Their kind aren’t meant to bleed. Not like this.
Ahead of me, Maven looks back and forth, hands on his hips. If I didn’t know him better, I would think him affected, angry or sad. But this is about to be another performance. Even though these are Silver officers, I feel a pang of pity for them.
The hospital hall is proof my Arvens are not made of stone. To my surprise, Kitten is the one to break first, her eyes watering with tears as she looks around. She fixes her gaze on the far end of the hall. White shrouds cover bodies. Corpses. A dozen dead.
At my feet, a young man hisses out a breath. He keeps a hand pressed to his chest, putting pressure on what must be an internal wound. I lock eyes with him, noting his uniform and his face. Older than me, classically handsome beneath streaks of silver blood. Black-and-gold house colors. House Provos, a telky. It doesn’t take him long to recognize me. His brows raise a little in realization, and he struggles for another breath. Beneath my gaze, he shakes. He’s afraid of me.
“What happened?” I ask him. In the din of the hall, my voice is barely more than a whisper.
I don’t know why he responds. Maybe he thinks I’ll kill him if he doesn’t. Maybe he wants someone to know what’s really going on.
“Corvium,” he murmurs back. The Provos officer wheezes, fighting to push out the words. “Scarlet Guard. It’s a massacre.”
Fear shivers in my voice. “For who?”
He hesitates, and I wait.
Finally he draws a ragged breath.
“Both.”
FIFTEEN
Cameron
I didn’t know what could possibly spur the exiled prince to action—until King Maven began his bleeding coronation tour. Clearly a ruse, definitely another plot. And it was headed straight for us. Everyone suspected an attack. And we had to strike first.
Cal was right about one thing. Taking the walls of Corvium was our best plan of action.
So he did it two days ago.
Working in conjunction with the Colonel and rebels already inside the fortress city, Cal led a strike force of Scarlet Guard and newblood soldiers. The blizzard was their cover, and the shock of an assault served them well. Cal knew better than to ask me to join. I waited back in Rocasta with Farley. Both of us paced by the radio, eager for news. I fell asleep, but she shook me awake before dawn, grinning. We held the walls. Corvium never saw it coming. The city boiled in chaos.
And we could no longer stay behind. Not even me. Admittedly, I wanted to go. Not to fight, but to see what victory actually looked like. And of course to get one step closer to the Choke, my brother, and some semblance of purpose.
So here I am, shrouded in the tree line with the rest of Farley’s unit, looking out at black walls and blacker smoke. Corvium burns from within. I can’t see much, but I know the reports. Thousands of Red soldiers, some spurred on by the Guard, turned on their officers as soon as Cal and the Colonel attacked. The city was already a powder keg. Fitting that a fire prince lit the fuse and let it explode. Even now, a day later, the fighting continues as we take the city, street by street. The occasional burst of gunfire breaks the relative silence, making me flinch.
I look away, trying to see farther than human reach. The sky here is dark already, the sun obscured by a cloudy gray sky. To the northwest, in the Choke, the clouds are black, heavy with ash and death. Morrey is out there, somewhere. Even though Maven released the underage conscripts, his unit hasn’t moved, according to our last intelligence reports. They’re the farthest away, deep in a trench. And the Scarlet Guard happens to be currently occupying the place his unit would return to. I try to block out the image of my twin huddled against the cold, his uniform too big, his eyes dark and sunken. But the thought is burned into my brain. I turn away, back to Corvium, to the task at hand. I need to keep my focus here. The sooner we take the city, the sooner we can get the conscripts moving. And then what? I ask myself. Send him home? To another hellhole?
I have no answers for the voice in my head. I can barely stomach the idea of sending Morrey back to the factories of New Town, even if it means sending him back to our parents. They’re my next goal, after I get my brother back. One impossible dream after another.
“Two Silvers just threw a Red soldier from a tower.” Ada squints into a pair of binoculars. Next to her, Farley remains still, arms calmly folded across her chest.
Ada continues to scan the walls, reading signals. In the gray light, her golden skin takes on a sallow hue. I hope she isn’t getting sick.
“They’re solidifying their position, retreating and regrouping into the central sector, behind the second ring wall. I calculate fifty at least,” she murmurs.
Fifty. I try to swallow my fear. I tell myself there’s no reason to be afraid. There’s an army between us and them. And no one is stupid enough to try to force me anywhere I don’t want to go. Not now, not with months of training behind me.
“Casualties?”
“A hundred of the Silver garrison dead. Most of the injured escaped with the rest into the wilderness. Probably to Rocasta. And there were less than a thousand in the city. Many had defected to the rebelling houses before Cal’s assault.”
“What about Cal’s newest report?” Farley asks Ada. “The Silvers deserting?”
“I included that in my calculations.” She almost sounds annoyed. Almost. Ada has a calmer disposition than any of us. “Seventy-eight are in holding now, under Cal’s protection.”
I put my hands on my hips, setting my weight. “There’s a difference between defection and surrender. They don’t want to join us; they just don’t want to end up dead. They know Cal will show mercy.”
“Would you rather he kill them all? Set everyone against us?” Farley snaps back, turning to me. After a second, she waves a hand dismissively. “There’s over five hundred of them still out there, ready to come back and slaughter us all.”
Ada ignores our jabbering and keeps her vigil. Up until she joined the Scarlet Guard, she was a housemaid to a Silver governor. She’s used to much worse than us. “I see Julian and Sara above the Prayer Gate,” she says.
I feel a squeeze of comfort. When Cal radioed in, he didn’t mention any casualties on his team, but nothing is ever certain. I’m glad Sara is all right. I squint toward the forbidding Prayer Gate, looking for the black-and-gold entry on the east end of the Corvium walls. On top of the parapets, a red flag waves back and forth, barely a glimmer of color against the overcast sky. Ada translates. “They’re signaling for us. Safe passage.”
She glances at Farley, waiting for her order. With the Colonel in the city, she’s the ranking officer here, and her word is good as law. Though she gives no indication of it, I realize she must be weighing her options. We have to cross open ground to get to the gates. It could easily be a trap.
“Do you see the Colonel?”
Good. She doesn’t trust a Silver. Not with our lives.
“No,” Ada breathes. She scans the walls again, her bright eyes taking in every block of stone. I watch her motions as Farley waits, still and stern. “Cal is with them.”
“Fine,” Farley says suddenly, her eyes lividly blue and resolute. “Let’s move out.”
I follow her begrudgingly. As much as I may hate to admit it, Cal isn’t the type to double-cross us. Not fatally, at least. He’s not his brother. I meet Ada’s eyes over Farley’s shoulder. The other newblood inclines her head a little as we walk.
I shove clenched fists into my pockets. If I look like a sullen teenager, I don’t care. That’s what I am: a scared, sullen teenager who can kill with a look. Fear eats me up. Fear of the city—and fear of myself.
I haven’t used my ability outside training in months, not since the magnetron bastards pulled our jet out of the sky. But I remember what it feels like, to use silence as a weapon. In Corros Prison, I killed people with it. Horrible people. Silvers keeping others like me trapped to slowly die. And the memory still makes me sick. I felt their hearts stop. I felt their deaths like they were happening to me. Such power—it frightens me. It makes me wonder what I could become. I think of Mare, the way she ricocheted between violent rage and numb detachment. Is that the price of abilities like ours? Do we have to choose—become empty, or become monsters?
We set out in silence, all of us hyperaware of our precarious position. We stand out sharply in the fresh snow, picking along in one another’s footprints. The newbloods in Farley’s unit are particularly on edge. One of Mare’s own, Lory, leads us with the awareness of a bloodhound, her head whipping back and forth. Her senses are incredibly heightened, so if there’s any imminent attack, she’ll see it, hear it, or smell it coming. After the raid on Corros Prison, after Mare was taken, she started dyeing her hair bloodred. It looks like a wound against the snow and iron sky. I level my gaze on her shoulder blades, ready to run if she so much as hesitates.
Even pregnant, Farley manages to look commanding. She pulls the rifle from her back, holds it in both hands. But she isn’t as alert as the others. Again her eyes slide in and out of focus. I feel a familiar pang of sadness for her.
“Did you come here with Shade?” I ask her quietly.
She snaps her head in my direction. “Why do you say that?”
“For a spy, you’re pretty easy to read sometimes.”
Her fingers drum along the barrel of her gun. “Like I said, Shade is still our main source of information on Corvium. I ran his operation here. That’s all.”
“Sure, Farley.”
We continue on in silence. Our breath mists on the air and the cold sets in, taking my toes first. In New Town we had winter, but never like this. Something to do with the pollution. And the heat from the factories kept us sweating at work, even in the depths of winter.
Farley is a Lakelander by birth, better suited to the weather. She doesn’t seem to notice the snow or the prickling cold. Her mind is still obviously somewhere else. With someone else.
“I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t go after my brother,” I mutter to the silence. Both for myself and for her. Something else to think about. “I’m glad he isn’t here.”
She glances at me sidelong. Her eyes narrow with suspicion. “Is Cameron Cole admitting she was wrong about something?”
“I can do that much. I’m not Mare.”
Another person might think that rude to say. Farley grins instead. “Shade was stubborn too. Family trait.”
I expect his name to act as an anchor, dragging her down. Instead, it keeps her moving, one foot in front of the other. One word after the next. “I met him a few miles from here. I was supposed to be recruiting Whistle operatives from the Nortan black market. Use organizations already in place to better facilitate the Scarlet Guard. The Whistle in the Stilts gave me a lead on some soldiers up here who might be willing to coordinate.”
“Shade was one of them.”
She nods, thoughtful. “He was assigned to Corvium with the support troops. An officer’s aide. A good position for him, even better for us. He fed the Scarlet Guard miles of information, all funneled through me. Until it became clear he couldn’t stay any longer. He was being transferred to another legion. Someone knew he had an ability, and they were going to execute him for it.”
I’ve never heard this story. I doubt few have. Farley is not exactly forthcoming with her personal history. Why she’s telling me now, I can’t say. But I can see she needs to. I let her talk, giving her what she wants.
“And then when his sister . . . I’ve never seen him so terrified. We watched Queenstrial together. Watched her fall, watched her lightning. He thought the Silvers were going to kill her. You know the rest of that, I assume.” She bites a lip, looking down the length of her rifle. “It was his idea. We already had to get him out of the army to protect him. So he faked his execution report. Helped with the paperwork himself. Then he was gone. Silvers don’t care enough to follow through on dead Reds. Of course, his family minded. That part stu
ck him for a while.”
“But he still did it.” I try to be understanding, but I can’t imagine putting my own family through something like that, not for anything.
“He had to. And—and it served as a good motivation. Mare joined up after she found out. One Barrow for another.”
“So that part of her speech wasn’t a lie.” I think about what Mare was forced to say, glaring down a camera like it was a firing squad. They asked if I wanted vengeance for his death. “No wonder she has personality issues. No one tells the girl the truth about anything.”
“It’ll be a long road back for her,” Farley murmurs.
“For everyone.”
“And now she’s on that infernal tour with the king,” Farley rattles on. She spools up like a machine, her voice gaining momentum and strength with every passing second. Shade’s ghost disappears. “It will make things easier. Still horribly difficult, of course, but the knot is loosened.”
“Is there a plan in place? She’s getting closer by the day. Arborus, the Iron Road—”
“She was in Rocasta yesterday.”
The silence around us shifts. If the rest of our unit weren’t listening before, they certainly are now. I look back to lock my gaze on Ada. Her liquid-amber eyes widen, and I can almost see the cogs turning in her flawless mind.
Farley presses on. “The king visited the wounded soldiers evacuated from the first wave of attack. I didn’t know until we were halfway here. If I had, maybe . . .” she breathes. “Well, it’s too late for that now.”
“The king practically travels with an army,” I tell her. “She’s guarded night and day. There was nothing you could have done, not with just us.”
Still her cheeks flush, and not from the cold. Her fingers keep tapping idly on the stock of her gun. “Probably not,” she replies. “Probably not.” Softer, to convince herself.
King's Cage Page 19
