After a moment in the hot sun shooing away flies drawn to the milk, I follow her in.
I don’t find Jane, but I find a woman facedown on the kitchen floor, a butcher knife sticking out of her back. Dried blood stains the ties of her white apron a dark red. Squatting down beside her, I touch her shoulder, but it’s obvious she’s dead. Her chest is still. Flies crawl on her face and on the doughy skin of her arms.
“Jane,” I call out, but I feel a blast of fearful wind behind me, just like I felt in the lighthouse. And just like in the lighthouse, she bursts through the doorway and charges at me, this time with a kitchen knife raised above her shoulder. Before I can get up she’s waving the knife at my throat, and all I can do is drop onto the floor beside the dead woman and roll out of her reach. I’m shivering and sweating all at the same time, unable to process what’s happening, so I let my instincts take over and kick at Jane’s scrawny legs. She grabs at a high-backed kitchen chair as she loses her balance, and it topples down with her.
She drops the knife on her way to the floor, and before she can find where it lands, I snatch it up. “What are you doing?”
“You felt me coming,” she says, and her lips twist into a smirk. “I think you do have that Enchanted magic. Maybe your daddy was Enchanted. Did your whore mother sell herself to some taskmaster?”
“Shut up!” I snap. But something inside me squirms. Because I’m standing over her with a knife in my hand, instead of lying on the floor with it in my back.
I can’t understand it. I can’t explain it. But I can no longer deny I’m using Cientia.
Unlike at the lighthouse, Jane lies still once she’s down, maybe because this time a knife is pointing at her face. “You killed this woman. You said she looked the other way—”
“I lied, and you believed me. You’re the most gullible girl I’ve ever met. You need my help, and it looks like I could use yours. Now put down the knife and let me up.”
“I’m not that gullible,” I say.
“You need my help—”
“You’re afraid.”
“Not of you, I’m not.”
“You are. You’ve been planning to kill me all along, but you’ve been afraid, because you knew if you failed, I’d kill you. But you were wrong. I’m a racer, not a murderer—”
“That’s why you need me—”
“Shut up!”
I sweep my gaze around the room, searching for something to bind Jane with. I bite my lip and try to keep from shaking. How did I get here? A minute ago I was on the road, worried about the sun and what I owed Jane. Now I’m trying to tie her up to keep her from killing me.
My eyes land on the dead woman’s bloodstained apron ties. Certainly an appropriate choice as far as irony goes, and since I don’t spot anything else that would do the job, apron ties it is.
“Turn over,” I say. When Jane’s response is nothing but a glare, I lean down close to her face with the knife until she turns away, then flip her by the shoulders so she’s facedown, setting a knee in the middle of her back. I have to stretch to reach the knotted ties and cut them free with the tip of the blade. It slices right through the fabric. “This is a very sharp knife,” I say. “If you’d only moved a little quicker, I’d be dead for sure.”
The house is hot and the dead woman is starting to stink a little. My head swims like there’s not enough air. I try not to think about the woman’s blood covering the apron strings as I use one to tie Jane’s hands behind her back. The second one, even more brittle and stiff than the first, I use to tie her ankles together.
“You need me,” Jane says. “You can’t abandon me here.”
I don’t answer. Instead I take a black canvas shoulder bag from the counter and stuff it with food that will keep—some nuts and crackers, an apple, plus what’s left of the fresh loaf of bread I smelled from the door. I hate to take it from a dead woman, but I also know I need it much more than she does now. In a drawer I find a tube of something called Healing Helper that claims to soothe and defend against infection in cuts, scrapes, and burns. When the bag is full, I’m ready to go.
“You can’t leave me,” Jane seethes. Her magpie eyes stare up at me but I look away.
“I can do whatever I want,” I say.
“What if no one finds me? I could starve to death.”
As angry as I am, I know I can’t leave her here. Not to keep her from starving to death, either. That farmhand we saw would find her eventually. But I need to be sure she’s arrested so she can’t continue in the race.
Her hands still tied behind her back, I untie Jane’s ankles. “The blade is an inch from your ear,” I say, yanking her up to her feet. It’s a tricky balance—the knife in one hand and Jane’s upper arm in the other—but I lead her past the bucket of milk, through the open back door, and across the courtyard. The barn is dim and heavy with the smell of damp hay, and inside we find the dead woman’s cow and a milking stool. On a shelf I spot a folded newspaper, and a pen next to a half-filled-in wager sheet for a Hearts and Hands tournament. I grab the pen and drop it into my bag. Glancing at the newspaper, I notice the page on top is filled with lonely-hearts ads—Man seeks woman for conversation and maybe more. A full-color ad with a picture of a pretty girl fills the bottom-right corner. Poppee’s Dance Hall, Village of Hedge, it says. Where the Ladies Are Always Friendly.
Poppees . . . the clue! It’s not a reference to flowers at all. It’s a dance hall! I remember the town I saw from the lighthouse, just beyond the farm. Could that be the Village of Hedge? I silently thank the lonely farmhand for holding on to this paper. “I hope you find love,” I mutter under my breath. Jane throws a glance at me but keeps her mouth shut.
Once the cow is untied, I shove a leg of the stool into Jane’s hands. The cow is on the small side with a spotted brown coat, and she eyes me suspiciously, but she follows when I tug on the rope at the end of her halter.
Dragging Jane alongside me, we make awkward progress as I lead the cow to the middle of the road in front of the house. A breeze ripples through the tall corn all around us, but the sun still bakes down. Using the cow’s long lead of rope, I tie her to Jane and then push Jane down onto the stool, snaking the end of the rope through the legs and knotting it under the seat. “When someone eventually comes by, they’ll stop,” I say. “The bloody apron ties should lead them to the woman you killed.” I almost wish her luck, but then I remember what Darius said about not wishing someone luck if you don’t mean it.
I turn up the road toward the village, my feet already burning. As I walk away, Jane calls to me, her voice full of panic. “Don’t leave me. You need me. I’ll die in this sun.”
“You’ll be found before you die,” I call back.
“I could still be a good partner.” Her voice rises as I walk away. The road bends, and when I look back, she’s hidden from view by the green wall of corn, but she still shouts to me, “I can help you. Who will put that salve on your back?”
I don’t know who will put the salve on my back, and I don’t care. I will not be accepting help from any other racers.
The road bends farther, and the sound of Jane’s voice fades behind me. Another sound drowns it out—the electric hum of the engine of an approaching vehicle. I hide myself behind the first row of cornstalks and watch it pass.
It’s a truck. The bed is too high for me to see into, but I assume from its large size and the mud on its tires that it’s carrying goods from the farm. As it goes by, I spot two young men hanging on to the side. Their hands on the truck’s rail and their feet on the sideboard, they stay out of sight of the driver, who most likely has no idea they are there. They are simply stealing a ride.
As I watch them, a realization dawns on me. The thing I need most—the thing that could mean the difference between winning and losing the Crown of Oblivion—is transportation.
After the truck passes, I run along behind. I don’t want to be seen, but I can’t stay away. I know the driver is about to discover a cow in
the middle of the road and, tied to that cow, a girl.
Nine
The truck is beyond my view when its screeching brakes tell me it’s come to a sudden stop. Running up behind, I slide into the cornfield across the street from the dead woman’s house to stay out of sight, and push my way between two rows. The ground is wet, and cool mud oozes between my toes. As I come alongside the truck, both boys hanging from the side drop to the road and run straight into the corn, passing right by me. One, about eighteen years old with old eyes in a young face, slows and gives my bloody back a long look. He’s an Outsider but not a racer—he’s still got his embeds. He’s just running. Maybe running away. His mouth works like he’s about to ask me a question, but then his companion calls from deeper in the cornfield, and he turns and follows without saying a word.
Back in the road, the farmer driving the truck—an Enchanted man with gray hair cut very close to his block-shaped head—shouts at Jane through the open window, blares the horn, and finally opens his door and steps out. While he’s out of the truck, I take advantage of the chance to sneak up to the tailgate and peek inside the bed. Outsiders sit with their backs against the cab and sides, their hands tied in front of them. Their faces are dirty and their clothes are stained with sweat.
If I hadn’t already accepted that I have Cientia, there’d be no denying it now. I thought the fear that radiated from Jane was strong, but it’s no match for the storm of emotions rising from the back of this truck. It’s not fear—it’s something more fixed than fear. Fear is about the unknown. There’s more of an inevitability to the feelings that wash over me now—more like dread of something terrible that is coming and can’t be stopped.
No one reacts to me except a broad-shouldered woman wedged into the corner. I don’t realize she’s a woman at all at first. Her hair has been shaved off, and a scar splits her left cheek and drags the corner of her mouth down into a scowl, so at first glance, she not only looks like a man, she looks like a cruel man. But when her eyes land on me and her brows go up, she transforms into someone’s mother. She twists in her seat to look over her shoulder in the direction of the farmer. When she turns back to face me again, she shakes her head hard. Don’t, she mouths. She lifts her bound wrists as if to show me what my fate might be if I got caught, though I have no idea what she means. What horror could cause the dark dread flooding me from her and the others? Beside her, a thin old man shakes his head at me too, but most of the others keep their eyes lowered as if they don’t see me. One boy mouths Stop it to the woman who is trying to warn me.
I should leave. I don’t want to put anyone in danger. But when my gaze falls on something sticking out from under a dark green tarp in the center of the open truck bed, my palms mist with sweat. It’s a motorbike tire. I’m not sure how I know, but I recognize it immediately. I know it’s a motorbike, and I know I can drive it.
The farmer is standing over Jane in the road. For a moment I worry that she’s talked her way out of this and he’s going to let her go. But then he turns toward the house, and with only a quick glance back at the truck, he drags Jane toward the driveway, the stool bouncing against the backs of her legs and the cow trailing behind.
I take my chance. I climb into the truck and pull off the tarp.
Just as I’d hoped, I find a motorbike lying on its side. But my exhilaration is cut off by another discovery. Under the tarp, huddled beside the motorbike, sits Darius.
His hazel eyes meet my gaze, and I feel like a child who has just seen a magic trick for the first time. Darius is as unexpected as a white rabbit pulled from a hat. He flinches in surprise, then rises up on one knee and peers through the windows of the truck cab at the road ahead before turning to look back toward the farm. “Are you going to be taking that tarp?” he asks. “Because it was serving a purpose where it was.”
“You can have it,” I say, dropping the crumpled tarp beside him. “But I’ll be taking this bike.”
Right beside the bike is a wide plank of wood, and it’s not hard to figure out it’s there to be used as a ramp. As I slide it to the open gate and let one end tip down to the road, I can’t help but wonder what Darius is doing hiding away on a truck heading south. Did he already find the clue at Poppee’s Dance Hall? Could he already be making his way to the third checkpoint? It certainly wouldn’t do me any good to ask him, and I know I can’t worry about Darius, or even these unfortunate Outsiders, right now. Instead, I grab the bike by the handlebars, pull it upright, and wheel it down the ramp to the ground. Darius watches me. “You know how to handle that?” he asks.
“Don’t worry about me,” I say.
“I’m not.”
I don’t give myself time to try to read Darius’s feelings, though there’s a scent like the air right after the rain, and I know that’s the smell of regret. Regret or rain, and it hasn’t rained. But it could be from anybody—not necessarily Darius—and I don’t have time to let it matter. I allow myself one brief glance over my shoulder to be sure the driver isn’t returning from the house yet, when the Outsider woman who tried to warn me away catches my eye.
I wish I could ask her if the village in the distance is Hedge, but I don’t dare bring it up in front of Darius. My gaze lingers on her scar. I’m wondering how she got it, when she smiles and mouths, Good luck. I can’t help but return her smile. I know she means it.
With Darius watching me, I climb onto the bike. It’s sized for a man, but it’s only a little big for me. It takes some extra effort to hold it up, but I know I’ll be fine once I’m moving. I turn the key, crank the pedal to engage the battery, and press the ignition. The engine hums, and I shift into gear and take off toward the village without so much as a glance at Darius.
For a while, I notice nothing but the changing crops—corn, beans, something else I don’t recognize—and the long silver arms that spray bucket after bucket of water onto the ground. I’m fairly certain I’ve never worked on a farm, because nothing is familiar.
Not like this bike. Riding this bike feels right. It’s the first thing to feel right since I woke up on that rock.
I spare a quick glance over my shoulder, just to be sure no one’s following. Nothing but the dark ribbon of road stretches behind me. The sun is dipping a bit toward the west, and I watch the shadow of me and the bike, one dark shape like we’re one creature. The engine heats my legs and feet, but at least there’s a cool wind against my skin as long as I’m moving.
I slow the bike as I pass the farm. I want to give the field of poppies a long look, to be sure I’m not missing anything. As the engine quiets, a series of staccato sounds pierce the air, and wariness inflates like a balloon in my chest. I recognize the sounds. They’re identical to the screams I heard from the lighthouse.
When the rows of corn finally run out, my view opens up to a field planted with low-growing crops. Nine Outsiders are bent over, filling baskets, their embeds blinking under their shirts. The tenth—a woman and the only Enchanted—stands straight, her hands twitching by her sides. The taskmaster.
Her face reminds me of a potato, lumpy and splotchy, shaded by the wide brim of her straw taskmaster hat. She aims her hands at the back of a bent picker and grunts out a breath. The Outsider drops to his knees and coils into a ball, shrieking.
A burst of panic prompts me to stop. I’ve got to help this man. But before I can even climb off the bike he’s straightening, brushing the back of his hand over his forehead. He sucks in a few quick breaths and then returns to picking, without even a backward glance, and I realize, This is something he’s used to. The potato-faced taskmaster turns her attention to the next Outsider bent over a basket.
No whips. Of course there are no whips. A whipped worker can become sick. Their wounds can become infected. Projectura—the third of the Three Unities, along with Cientia and Pontium—leaves no wounds behind. Not on the outside, at least.
I must have suffered before I entered this race. I’m an indentured Outsider, and I volunteered for the Race of Obli
vion, and from what I’ve seen of the race so far, you’d have to be crazy or desperate to do that, and I don’t think I’m crazy. Did I suffer like this, or did someone I love? I think of the woman with the scar in the truck, how she reminded me of a mother. Could my own mother be suffering like these Outsiders? Is that why I’m racing?
The taskmaster lifts her head in my direction. Her eyes lock on my face, and my heart pounds like a piston. I’ve lingered here too long. I let out the throttle, pick up speed, and fly away.
Ten
It isn’t long before there’s heavy traffic on the road, so I know I’m getting close to the village. The corn is so high, it’s hard to see what’s ahead, but then I round a bend and pass a slow-moving truck, and all at once the sharply slanting rooftops of the village are right in front of me. It looks out of place, like it sprang up from the farmland out of nothing. I pass through a gate under a sign that reads Village of Hedge and turn down a narrow cobblestone lane that’s flanked by high gray walls. The streets are so narrow and the buildings so tall that they block the sun, and afternoon all at once becomes evening.
Not knowing where I’m going, I turn right at some corners and left at others, wherever I can get through, between pushcarts and bicycles and an occasional horse-drawn cart. The streets are so slender, people move in single file, like ducks. Gas lamps burn in shop windows, and light pours from open shop doorways. I scan unfamiliar face after unfamiliar face, until my gaze snags on a face I recognize: the ginger-haired man who attacked Darius at the base of the lighthouse. The one Darius spit on. In front of him walks a boy with straight black hair, droopy shoulders, and bare feet. Another racer. Having seen them, I make it my business not to be seen, but this young boy—he can’t be older than fifteen—stops in the middle of the intersection and blocks my way. His expression is too senseless for me to believe he is hindering me on purpose, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t have time to waste. I gun the engine and swerve around him, cutting things a little too close. He jumps back into his red-haired companion, and when I throw a quick glance over my shoulder, I glimpse the redhead making a vulgar gesture at my back.
Crown of Oblivion Page 8
