Darius adds, “Yes, thank you,” before grabbing me by the arm and tugging me away.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“I didn’t know it was an officer—”
“Even so! You knew it was an Enchanted—”
“I know, I know, but it was all too much! The dead racer, the disrespect—”
“Since when can an Outsider afford to be concerned about disrespect? You better find a way to handle it, because you’re in a race, and that’s all that matters right now.” His hazel eyes, for all the softness of their color, are as hard as stone.
“Oh, right. I forgot.” I hear my voice in my own head and I sound so immature, but I don’t know how to sound any different right now. Maybe the officer and Darius are right, and I’m an immature, stupid girl who is destined to die before the end of the race. For a moment I’m sincerely concerned I’m about to cry, which would be so much worse than sounding immature—it would prove I’m immature—so I bob my head in a hasty nod and turn to walk the rest of the way to the station doors.
Darius catches up to me and hooks me by the elbow. “Everyone else is heading in,” he says.
He’s right, and like him, I’d prefer to stay away from the rest of the herd. So we follow a path that skirts the brick wall of the train station, leading to the tracks in the back—four sets, all running in the same direction—and two one-story, wooden buildings. The walls of one are filled with rows of wide windows. The other is made of low walls hunched under a flat roof.
“Barracks, I’d guess,” Darius says.
The sun is fully up now, and the air is already hot. The edges of my hair stick to the damp skin at the back of my neck, and the dead woman’s coat feels like it weighs one hundred pounds. Along the tracks, a line of Outsiders swing sledgehammers, pounding huge nails into shiny new rails. They move in unison, almost like a line of dancers. My eyes float over the space behind them until I spot the person I’m looking for—a man in a wide-brimmed straw hat—the Enchanted taskmaster. He stands not five feet away, watching. His hand twitches at his side, and my own palms tingle, too.
I quickly turn my head away. I don’t want to see something terrible and not be able to do anything about it.
“I think we should take a look around inside, after all,” Darius says. His eyes are on the taskmaster, who is now watching us.
Walking into the chilly, climate-controlled air inside the station is like diving into a pool. I suddenly realize how thirsty I am. The canteen inside my bag is mostly full, so I take a huge gulp and offer it to Darius. “We should refill it before we leave,” I say, trying not to acknowledge the needling worry at the back of my mind that the next clue might send us out over the desert on foot again.
The board announcing arrivals and departures flashes a message across the bottom.
ALL GOVERNMENT TRAINS ARE DELAYED DUE TO TRACK WORK . . .
NO TRAINS UNTIL TOMORROW . . .
Still, the place is bustling with Outsiders. Even when their clothes conceal their missing embeds, it’s their lack of luggage—along with their filthy clothes, sleep-starved eyes, and shoeless feet—that tells me they are racers, just like us. I make a rough count. There are maybe twenty I take for racers. But it doesn’t matter, really, if there are twenty, forty, or a thousand. As long as I find the clue first and leave them all behind me.
A sign above the clock seems too obvious. The Truth You Seek Turns Clockwise. Darius stands beneath it and stares up, one of a tight group of at least a half dozen other racers, all staring at the clock like they’re waiting for the clue to reveal itself.
“Everyone here would have seen it by now,” I say. “What else acts like a clock?”
Darius’s eyes move to the big glass doors facing the tracks. “The sun?”
“Could be,” I say. “Or shadows.”
Maybe he thinks I’m on to something, maybe he just wants to get away from two officers who have moved close to us, but Darius nods and follows me out a side door. As we go, I catch a few words of conversation between the officers—sandcrawler and found and stolen.
“If I were the type to despair,” Darius starts, “now would be the time to do it—”
“We couldn’t drive it any farther, anyway. It would’ve been too risky—”
“So is crossing the Black Desert on foot.”
I can’t argue with that. We’ve already seen two racers dead from exposure. “Maybe we’ll leave here by train?” The next government train might not be until tomorrow, but private trains should still be running. We may be able to hitch a ride, especially since Darius has mackels to offer in exchange.
The air is already so hot, Mary’s dress sticks to my body in a way I don’t particularly like. I sit in the shade of a low roof that covers the mostly empty train platform, and Darius sits beside me. Even in the shade, even with the breeze, the heat is intolerable. I wish I could bottle some of it and keep it for nightfall.
I pull the canteen from my bag and we each take a drink. Darius pulls the apple from my bag. “I wish I had a knife so we could share it.”
“This side’s mine,” I say, taking a bite. “The other side’s yours.” We pass the apple back and forth, the juice running down both our chins. I get sticky and lose my manners, licking my hands clean. When we’re down to the last few bites, he pushes it back at me when it’s his turn.
The heat draws a wall of haze from the ground, tricking my eyes into believing I’m looking at a wide lake, spreading across the sand along the tracks. The air rings with the sound of hammers against the rails, occasionally punctuated by the cry of an Outsider. I’m trying to close my mind to it, to think about the clue, when Darius jumps to his feet.
“There’s something out on the sand. I’ve been watching its shadow shorten.”
He stumbles forward, so I get to my feet, brushing my damp hands down the front of Mary’s dress. Sweat glues a layer of sand to my palms. I throw my bag over my shoulder and scoop up the wool coat.
The sky is nothing but wide and blue—an ocean above the desert. Darius has noticed the slimmest line on the darkest sand, and I wonder if his eyes are that good or if my eyes are just that bad. As we come closer, an object begins to take shape. A sign. A wooden sign painted gray, with a message hand-lettered in white script:
Shadows form the hands of your clock.
Afternoon shadows point your way.
“Afternoon shadows point east,” says Darius, raising an eyebrow at me. I can barely see him, I’m squinting so hard against the sun, and my eyes are tearing up, but I think he’s smiling. I don’t know why. Happy to find the clue, I guess, but I don’t like the idea of walking east into the desert.
But I don’t know how to argue against it. So we walk east, toward the tracks, and beyond them, the empty sand.
Nineteen
We hike so long, I can’t even see the outpost behind us anymore. Fear that we’ll become disoriented and hopelessly lost in this sea of sand robs my mouth of the little moisture it had. My lips taste like paper. If the shape that’s growing in the distance turns out to be something other than another clue, I may not produce tears when I cry.
As we get closer, I sense impatience, but it’s not coming from Darius. Someone else is out here. The shape in the distance turns out to be another sign. Like the first one, it’s gray with white lettering, but I can’t read its message because a man is draped over it, like a wilted climbing vine. The neckline of his shirt covers the bottom of his throat, so it’s not immediately clear if he’s an Outsider or an Enchanted. “Astrid, at last,” he says. “I’ve been waiting here for you all morning.”
Another stranger who knows my name.
I shade my eyes with my hand to look at him, and beside me, Darius does the same. I got this, I mouth to Darius. Even in the shadow of his hand, I see his lips flatten into a thin line before he mouths his reply. Be careful.
“Could you move?” I ask the Outsider.
He slides his back from the sign. It reads:
>
I am a signal of a coming change. Though I am beautiful to the eye, I portend death.
Come to my front door as the dawn breaks. Its color will tell you where to go next.
I don’t know the answer to this riddle. I wonder if Darius does, or even this Outsider, for that matter.
There’s nothing remarkable about this young man—probably no older than me and Darius—yet everything about him feels wrong. I immediately try to read him, of course, and what I get doesn’t help convince me that I should trust him. His feelings are cryptic, as if maybe he’s had practice at confusing someone with Cientia. There’s definitely sincerity and truth—I believe he’s relieved to see me. But I also feel a secret he’s hiding, dark and pungent and scented with fennel, not unlike Darius’s secret.
And I feel fear.
“You’re afraid.”
“I am. I’m afraid of what might happen to you. Authority guards inside the station are asking questions about a female racer.” I think he’s expecting a reaction. When he doesn’t get one, he continues. “They say that even though this girl is an Outsider, she possesses . . . she uses . . . Enchanted magic.”
“What makes you think it’s me?”
“I know it’s you. I know that you’re Astrid Jael, and I’m here to help you. Because I’m Jayden Jael, your brother.”
“My brother?” I can’t hide the shock in my voice, which makes me angry with myself. “But you’re not in the race.” He tips his head at me. This is not the response he was expecting. Either that, or he’s not sure he heard me. “I thought my brother was in the race.”
“Oh.” He’s heard me now. His expression goes dark. “I didn’t know you knew that.”
“So what’s the truth, then? You’re not in the race after all?”
“No,” he says, “that’s our other brother.” He runs the back of his hand above his mouth, wiping away a line of sweat. “It’s our younger brother, Marlon, who’s in the race. I’m your older brother.”
My head swims. I think of Darius and his secret memory. I hadn’t wanted to admit how much I envied him that. But how much better is this? To be standing face-to-face with someone who could answer all my questions?
“Slow down,” Darius says. I think he’s speaking to Jayden, but I look over to see him staring at me. “Why are you so quick to trust him? You can’t know he’s who he says he is.” He turns on Jayden. I can’t help but wonder if he really doubts this is my brother, or if he just hopes it’s not. “How old are you?” he asks.
“Nineteen. Two years older than Astrid. Who are you?”
“How did you know you could find your sister here?” Darius asks, ignoring the question.
Jayden smiles. Not a friendly smile—an unfriendly, I know what you’re trying to do smile. “I gave a ride to one of the racers. She was talkative, all worked up about a girl racer she’d seen with magic like an Enchanted. She can fight just like one, she said. She also said a few racers had alerted the Authority. So I agreed to drive the girl as far as the next checkpoint, which turned out to be the outpost. Then I figured out the clue and came out here to wait. What took you so long?”
He asks this question directly to me, like he’s done with Darius. “We were being watched,” I lie. If this is my brother, I don’t want him to think I couldn’t figure out the clue. “It took discipline, but we waited.”
The boy scoffs. “Discipline? Until the day you entered this race, disciplined would’ve been the last word I used to describe you.”
This comment is the first thing this stranger has said that shows he may actually know me. Darius’s gaze holds mine for an extra moment. This discipline quip has helped convince him, too.
Which is a bit insulting, if I’m honest. I tug my gaze away from Darius.
I look the stranger over. His build is slight, like mine. But his hair is almost blond, whereas mine is almost black. And his eyes are much rounder than mine. Still, none of these things mean he couldn’t be my brother, I suppose.
Yet there’s this: Three of us stand here, but only one of us looks out with clear eyes from a smooth, well-fed face. He has a vehicle and the freedom to use it. And yet two of his siblings entered the Race of Oblivion? Something doesn’t add up. “Tell me this,” I say. “Why did I enter this race?”
“You were angry,” he says. His eyes change focus, and I can tell he’s really remembering it. Remembering me. It makes me ache with jealousy to think that I can be seen by his mind’s eye, but not by my own. “Our father met the princess at the Apple Carnival. She gave him a royal order giving him access to the healthcare citizens receive, but he died before he could use it. I guess you were angry enough to grab at citizenship any way you could.”
“And our brother? Why would he enter, too?”
“He didn’t know you had entered. You hid it from him.”
Beside me, Darius is growing restless, shifting his weight and kicking the sand. I don’t care. Let him move on, then. Because whoever this is—my brother or not—he wants to help me. I have a million questions, and I intend to ask every single one of them, including if he knows the answer to the riddle on this sign and if he can take me there. But first I have to ask the question that’s been eating at me since I first learned I had a brother in the race. “Our brother . . . how is he doing? Is he ahead of me, or behind me?”
He hesitates too long.
“You can tell me. He’s ahead, isn’t he? By how much?”
“That’s not it.”
“Then how far behind?” Once more, I can’t read him, but if his face is any indication, he doesn’t want to answer. “Just tell me.”
“Our brother Marlon is neither ahead of you nor behind,” he says.
He says something else, but a gust blows his words away, and I have to make him repeat it.
“I said I’m sorry,” he calls into the wind, and this time I hear him too well. “But our brother Marlon is already dead.”
Twenty
If I ever wondered why they say heartbroken to describe grief, I don’t have to wonder anymore. As bad as it hurt to learn my father had died, this is far worse somehow. Even though I can’t recall my brother’s face, it doesn’t seem to matter. I feel as if this stranger has cut a hole in my chest, and the wind is just blowing through me now.
“I’m sorry that I had to tell you,” says the stranger. And like before, I can’t read him. You’d think he’d be a pool of the darkest, deepest pain, but there is just nothing there. Or at least, nothing he’s not masking.
But if he’s really my brother, why hide his grief from me?
“That’s one of the reasons I have to help you. I can’t lose you both,” he says.
“Plus, if I win, you win too, right?” I say. “Doesn’t the winner’s whole family receive citizenship?”
“Well, yes, I guess, but that’s not why I’m here. I’d be just as happy to take you home right now, if that’s what you said you wanted. All I want is to keep you safe.”
“How did he die?” I ask. My voice breaks a bit on the words. In response, I feel a bit of sorrow-tinged sympathy, but it’s not coming from the boy who calls himself my brother. It’s coming from Darius.
The stranger shakes his head. “Astrid, please. Let’s not talk about that now.”
“I want to know. How did he die? How do you even know—”
“The girl I drove here told me. She described a boy she’d seen dead on the road. A boy—a young kid—with black hair. A real young kid. That’s how I know it’s him. He was the youngest in the race.”
My mind goes back to the roadhouse, to the boy with black hair who mocked me by mimicking my words. He was with the ginger-haired racer, the one we stole the battery from. I can’t help but wonder if he would’ve made it if we hadn’t taken that battery. But I keep that to myself. Instead I ask, “Do you know the meaning of this clue?”
“I do,” says the stranger. He casts a sideways glance at Darius. “But I don’t want to tell you here. Come with me. I can
drive you there in my truck.”
If anything he’s said has made me want to trust this man and go with him, it’s these words: in my truck. The thought of getting out of this desert and carried all the way to the next clue riding comfortably in a truck is more enticing than even the thought of a shower and a clean bed. But maybe because I want it so badly, I know I can’t trust the offer too easily. “How is it you have a truck?” I ask.
“We’re from the far north, you and me—farm country. You’ve been breaking your back bringing in the early harvest, right up until they came for you.”
“What crop?”
He hesitates just a moment. “Apples. I deliver them in the truck.”
“Wait.” It’s Darius. He’s been listening, and now he has an opinion, but honestly, I wish he would mind his own business and keep his opinions to himself. “Don’t trust him. Astrid,” he says, and he’s emphatic. He’s tugging my arm, forcing me to look at him. “I know he’s lying to you.”
“How?” As much as I don’t trust this stranger myself, I certainly don’t want Darius’s advice on the matter. Darius, who helped me only so he could take advantage of the bike I had. Of course he’s going to try to disrupt this opportunity for me. “How could you know?”
“Because the memory I had . . . the secret I’m keeping . . . It’s about you.” His eyes move away, as if admitting this is somehow embarrassing. The wind stirs the curls that shade his forehead. He draws a deep breath and then turns those hazel eyes back to my face, and I know I have to hear him out. “What I remember contradicts what he’s telling you.”
Something cools the air. I feel a shadow, like a cloud passing over the sun, though the sky is practically clear. It’s coming from Darius. It’s regret and it’s pain and it’s the gloomy chill of whatever he’s about to tell me. It’s true, whatever it is, and I kind of hate him for it. I want to accept a ride from this stranger so badly it hurts. I want to believe I can trust him. And Darius is ruining all that.
But then, if this Outsider is lying, maybe he’s lying about my brother’s death, too.
Crown of Oblivion Page 15
