The higher we climb, the sicker I feel.
About every ten feet, we pass a platform. Each one is the same as the last—a flat, empty square of metal so thin it hums in the wind. When we reach the tenth platform, about a hundred feet up, we finally find something different. A box built into the frame of the tower, with a panel of lights blinking in its metal door.
Letting go of the ladder, even to crawl onto a wider platform, does not come easy. My fingers are frozen, and if I wasn’t convinced I’d freeze to death if I stayed on the ladder, I doubt I would ever slide out onto the floor.
Darius shames me. Stepping from the ladder with the big wrench tucked under his arm, he strides to the flashing panel while I cower on the floor. I remember his spiderlike climb up the lighthouse. “Don’t you have any respect for heights?”
“Everyone’s got their strengths,” he says, as he slams the wrench against the panel and the lights flicker, then return to their rhythmic flashing. He swings it again, this time bringing it down against the latch, and the door to the metal box pops open.
I get only a glimpse of the noodle soup of wires inside. Darius doesn’t hesitate. He clamps the wrench onto the wires and, tugging hard, rips them free.
Sparks crackle in the dark, and Darius falls toward me, landing hard on his back at my feet. His breath heaves out but then his eyes flip open, shining in the moonlight as he stares up at me from the floor. For a moment, he smiles. I think he’s going to laugh. But instead he curls onto his side and presses his palms to his temples. Instead of a laugh, a weird sound ripples through his lips, like the cry of a dying bird.
The blinking light at the top of the tower has gone dark. The lights in the station are out.
It worked.
“Can you move?” I speak right into Darius’s ear. This plan depends on speed, and we are quickly running out of time. I shake Darius and put my lips against his ear again. “Can you climb down with me?”
But Darius lies as still as a dead man, and on the ground, the door to the guardhouse swings open.
Seventeen
A silhouette steps out of the guardhouse and into the night, sweeping a handheld light across the ground. The light turns upward, illuminating the path of the ladder through the center of the tower. I pull Darius to me and huddle away from the edges of the platform, knowing we must be visible but still hoping we’re not.
I don’t dare breathe.
But then the light moves away; the space around us goes dark again. The beam bounces off the ground and then the wall of the guardhouse. Then the door. Then it lights up the windows from the inside.
I draw a deep breath that bursts back out of me in a loud huff. “Darius!” I say, probably louder than I should, but it does no good. He doesn’t reply. He only clutches his head, his eyes squeezed shut, as if there’s a painful sound that only he can hear. A choked cry leaks from his lips, and it’s hideous.
I remember the female racer with the journalists, the way she’d made such a similar sound. And I remember what they’d called it. Memory sickness.
Shouts spill out when the guardhouse door bangs open again. Anger and annoyance rise up from the ground as the first man stomps back out and approaches the tower.
Again, light filters up from below. The ladder vibrates in time with the guard’s steps. He’s climbing.
From my knees, I lean into the opening in the floor and look down the ladder. I have a clear view to the top of the man’s head. At first I think he’s wearing a helmet, but then I realize he’s bald, his bare skin a shiny dome. His battery light traces a wide arc back and forth—he’s tucked it, bulb up, into the waistband of his pants as he climbs hand over hand, hand over hand. He’s so close, the light hurts my eyes each time it sweeps by.
How could I have thought this was a good plan? How could I have made such a brilliant mistake? But Darius had thought it was a good plan, too, hadn’t he? We’d hardly discussed it. Back then, huddled in the sandcrawler and looking into the warm house, it seemed unimaginable that the guards would leave it so quickly to come out into this vicious cold, before we could even climb down.
The movement of the light makes the tower feel like a swinging pendulum. The guard’s boots ring against the rungs. I feel like I’m inside a ticking clock.
I’m out of time.
I have only one idea. I’ve known I would try it eventually, but even so, my stomach flips like a fish for fear of what will happen if this fails. But I didn’t remember I had Cientia, so maybe this is something else I’ve forgotten. My only other option is to fight, and fighting this high up would almost certainly be the last thing I ever did.
I stretch my arms toward the man’s lowered head. Press my palms out as if to hold him back. My eyes squeeze shut and I concentrate on pushing my anger and my fear out through my open hands.
Nothing happens. Nothing at all. If I thought Darius could see me, I’d be mortified by how stupid that attempt at Projectura must have looked.
My heart thumps in my chest as I try to remember the potato-faced taskmaster and how she used Projectura against the farmworkers. She held out her hand, and she let out a grunt.
She breathed out a grunt.
The guard is so close now. I raise my arms again, squeeze my eyes shut again, but before I can breathe, the man on the ladder is yelling and my lids fly open.
“Vandals!” he calls out, with the self-satisfaction of a child with the right answer. “Well, you’re in trouble now.”
He’s rising again, the light swings and blinds me again, and my eyes press shut. My hands go up, and they’re shaking so hard you’d think I was waving.
This time, it’s different.
This time, something ignites behind my lids, a match flaming to life. But before it flares up, it’s out, extinguished by a rush of air that flows out of me and down.
It’s not the match, I realize, but the breath that blows it out. That’s where the power lies.
A short cry flies up from below, and my eyes snap open. The guard shakes his head like a dog shaking off the rain. Like he’s been rattled. Like he’s been kicked in the head by a foot he can’t see.
His head shakes, but his hands return to the ladder, and he’s climbing again. He is getting so close, I can hear him cussing me out under his breath. My instincts tell me to get to my feet and prepare to fight, but I force myself to stay on my knees. I push my arms out one more time, press my eyes closed one more time, and the breath rushes from me again.
There is a loud, high shriek.
I open my eyes to see him fall. The back of his head slams into the platform right below him. His elbows hit the next one. Each collision slows his fall, but none of them stop him. He drops past the lowest platform and lands in a heap on the ground, his legs pulled up, his arms protecting his head. At first he lies still, and I wonder if he’s out. But then he’s on his knees, then on his feet. The light traces his path as he limps back to the door, swings it open, and slams it shut behind him.
Right now, I can’t be gentle with Darius, but I can apologize later if we make it out of here. I shake him, and when he doesn’t respond, I shake him hard. So hard his head bounces off the metal floor. With a gasp, he opens his eyes.
“Can you climb down?” I ask. “It’s now or never.” He stares at me like he’s playing my words back in his head. By the expression on his face, I think maybe he doesn’t remember where we are. “Darius,” I say, “we have to go now.”
Just as I’m about to shake him again, he surprises me. He sits up and looks down at the ground, as if looking for the guard. Then he slides his feet through the hole and starts climbing down.
Halfway to the ground, the door opens again.
I freeze on the ladder, and luckily for both of us, Darius freezes too.
The man in the doorway calls back into the guardhouse. “You can wait for them to come down if you like. I’m going up there to throw them down.” But then the open door is buffeted by the icy wind, and he must reconsider, becau
se he steps back inside, yanking the door shut behind him. It slams, and the whole building rattles on its frame.
Darius reaches the bottom of the ladder and drops to the ground. I’m right behind him.
The door flies open again. The wind catches it and pulls it from the hand of the man standing in the doorway.
Light streams into my eyes, but it’s unsteady. I can see well enough to know that I’m looking at a bald-headed, unshaven man staring out at us.
For a moment his eyes are clouded, but then they sharpen. “Vandals,” he says, like his thoughts just skipped back in time to the moment he first saw me on the tower. His eyes go from sharp to heated then, and a flicker of a smile passes over his lips so briefly I almost think I imagined it. But it was there, because now he raises his free hand, and I realize that flicker was a smile of anticipation. Anticipation of the pain he plans to cause us.
He must think he has all the time in the world. Maybe this isn’t the same man I hit with Projectura after all. Or maybe, I think, he doesn’t quite believe what happened on the tower. Why would he? Even if he hasn’t guessed we’re racers, he can see we aren’t Enchanteds. He’d never guess we might have magic of our own.
He doesn’t even react to my own raised arms. I think he barely sees us. All he can see is how pleased he is with himself.
My eyes close. The match ignites and is huffed out quick as lightning, quicker than I can think. I just get my eyes open in time to see him drop to his knees.
Darius scrambles up and pushes past me. He looks back at me though, wide-eyed and openmouthed, and I know he never saw me use Projectura on the tower. Even the guard, on all fours now braced against the pain, seems less surprised than Darius.
As soon as Darius is beside the guard the flow of energy stops, but I’m not sure if I stopped it or if it stopped on its own. What I don’t know about Projectura is everything.
I climb slowly to my feet, never taking my eyes off the guard’s face, keeping my arms half raised, just in case. But I don’t need to. He may not understand what happened, but he believes it. And he’s not going to bait me again.
A feeling rises in my chest, like wings opening.
Darius bends and rifles through the guard’s pockets, smiling when he finds a set of keys. “The sandcrawler,” he says. He runs by me, but I hear him slow to a stop when I don’t follow.
“I’ll be right there,” I say, not looking away from the guard.
“Don’t be long.” I hear Darius’s steps recede as he sprints away.
But I linger, staring down at the Enchanted guard on the ground, an unrepressed smirk on my lips. His emotions are a swirl of anger and shame, but that’s not what keeps me here. What keeps me here is a faint fragrance that tinges the air between us. A warm scent like bread toasting.
Respect.
It lasts only a moment, and then the warmth is gone. His mouth works, ready to spit an accusation, but before he can say a word, I turn.
I hear the engine of the sandcrawler growl to life, but still, I walk. I refuse to run.
Eighteen
As soon as we are away in the sandcrawler, I shrug my bag off my shoulders and clutch it to my chest. It’s already daybreak, and the inside of the sandcrawler has the smell of a heater that’s been out of use for a long time. The guards must have no reason to drive at night.
“Why did I have to take it too far?” I ask aloud, as much to myself as to Darius. “I couldn’t just turn my back and run away. I had to stare him down. Make sure he knew he’d been beaten by an Outsider.”
“If I were you,” he says, “I’d be a lot less upset and a lot more pleased with myself.”
I want to snap back at him that he knows an awful lot about the way I should feel, but instead I say, “Those guards could comm the Enchanted Authority and tell them about the attack on the tower. They could tell them about me . . . that I have magic I shouldn’t have.”
“What if they do tell?” he asks. “No one could know that the girl was you.”
“Of course they could! They could describe me—”
“Maybe they could. But I don’t think they would automatically assume you’re a racer. For one, you’re clean. For another, they think you were there to sabotage their tower. They’re more likely to assume you’re a member of the Outsider Liberation Army than a racer.”
This is something I hadn’t thought of. Maybe he’s right. Maybe the Authority won’t be looking for me among the racers.
With Darius not looking at me, I take the opportunity to look at him. His face glows in the yellow light that’s beginning to fill the windows. The rest of him is covered in a coating of gray dust, but I can tell he’s wiped his face. For a moment I think he will say something more—I feel a confession on his lips—but all he says is, “There’s the road.”
I follow the line of his gaze. He’s right. We’ve made it back to the road that leads to the outpost, and I’m surprised to see more than just a few vehicles—trucks and motorized carriages—streaming toward our next checkpoint. Some are still far back in the distance, but they are coming. My stomach sinks. I wonder how many are carrying other racers.
If Darius doesn’t want to hear about my worries, there’s still one other thing I want to talk about. “So what happened to you back on the tower? Did you get a shock when you pulled those wires?”
“If you mean from the electricity, then no.”
“Then what was it?”
“A memory came back to me.” The sandcrawler slows until it stops. He pivots in his seat to look at me. “It’s too terrible to talk about.” Darius’s shoulders stiffen. “I hope you’ll understand. I don’t want to talk about it.”
I want to ask more questions—I want to know everything he remembered—but looking at him in profile, the set of his jaw makes it clear he’s not going to tell me anything else. He takes his foot off the brake and returns to steering the sandcrawler toward the road.
Maybe I’m violating his privacy, but as soon as he closes off, I reach out with my senses to read him.
The fragrance of anise wafts around him, dark and pungent like black licorice, and I’m both satisfied and horrified that I was right to be suspicious. It’s not quite deception I feel, but he’s guarding a secret.
Even as my mind begins to spin with curiosity about the memory Darius finds too terrible to share, I know I can’t let concern for him distract me. We’ll be separating soon, and even now, we’re competitors, not partners. I know it, and Darius knows it, too. I shouldn’t be surprised he’s keeping secrets.
It doesn’t matter. I’m going to win the race, and I can ask Darius all the questions I want after that.
When I finally spot the flat gray roofs of the outpost, it’s not the other vehicles or the other people—some of whom are clearly racers—that unsettle me most. It’s the red and yellow lights that flash atop black trucks with darkly tinted windows, announcing the presence of the Enchanted Authority. At least four Authority trucks are lined up in front of the building I take to be the rail station. The rest of the “outpost”—if you can really call it that—is just a few low wooden buildings. Uniformed Authority officers mill about. They appear to be stopping random people on their way to the trains.
“Don’t freak out,” Darius warns me.
It’s too late. My heart is a horse running flat out at a gallop, and I’m its rider, barely hanging on.
“Let’s not get too close in the sandcrawler,” I say. “In case they’re looking for it.”
We park far back from the doors, and as we walk to the station, I notice faces I recognize. The ginger-haired racer who almost stole our bike at the roadhouse. Guess he found some other form of transportation to steal. I also spot two of the racers I fought with Jane, including the boy with the huge arms. Darius says, “Don’t worry about the other racers.”
“Who says I’m worried?” I say, but I can’t keep the edge from my voice. I’d have to be a fool not to be worried.
I take off the dead w
oman’s coat. I was wearing it at the tower, so if the guards reported it, they probably didn’t describe Mary’s gray dress. I hold tight to the strap of my bag where it loops over my shoulder and keep my head down as we pass two Authority officers standing over what appears to be the body of a dead racer on the path that leads to the building. “Do you remember him?” I ask Darius.
He shakes his head.
“I do. I fought him at the lighthouse. He was one of the racers who jumped you.”
Unlike the woman we found sitting up expectantly in the road, this dead man is curled up, lying on his side. I can’t help but wonder who is home rooting for him. How will they find out he died? Where will his body be taken?
I’m trailing behind Darius as he heads up the path, looking back over my shoulder at the dead man, so I don’t see the person until we collide.
“Look out!” a voice snaps behind me. And then she adds, “You Outsiders are too stupid to watch where you’re going.”
Since we reached the road and I saw this crowd, pressure has been building inside me. Something about the word stupid kicks out the stopper that’s holding it in. My head flips up and the words fly out before I even turn around. “I’m sorry,” I say, in a tone that says quite the opposite. “I didn’t see you. I was too distracted by the dead man on the ground.”
I spin around to find a female Authority guard glowering at me.
Real horror rolls out of Darius, but the officer stays calm. “You’re a racer, right?” she asks.
“I am.” I swallow. Why did I open my mouth? Could this guard already be looking for me?
“I could arrest you,” she says, “but I won’t. I won’t let you off that easy. If you’re too stupid to watch where you’re going, if you’re too stupid to know not to speak to me with that tone, arresting you would be merciful, compared to the kind of death you’re destined for.”
Her lips twitch into a smirk. Inside, I heave out a sigh of relief. She doesn’t recognize me. “Thank you for your courtesy,” I say, and for once, I control my mouth.
Crown of Oblivion Page 14
