“You had a memory,” Jayden—or whatever this boy’s name might be—says. And though he seems to have limitless skill at concealing his feelings, even a person without Cientia could see he’s working himself into a tizzy now. “She’s supposed to believe the memory of some hapless racer over the word of her own brother?”
“Where were you the day of the carnival?” Darius asks. “Where were you when the princess greeted her father?”
“I was watching with my family.”
“With your family? Or with her family?”
“With our family. It’s the same family.”
“And when her father died? Where were you then?”
My stomach is a bag of snakes. If I could vomit right now, I think I’d bring up nothing but twisting serpents.
“I was beside him.”
Darius holds still so long, I almost hope I imagined everything he just said. Or that he’s about to tell me that he’s been lying and that my brother is telling the truth. But he doesn’t. Instead he says, “You’re a liar.”
“Astrid—”
“This is what I remembered,” Darius says, and I’m at once anxious to hear every word and wishing there were no words to hear. “The day of the Apple Carnival I saw the princess greet your father. He was with a young boy—the boy we saw at the roadhouse.”
And so this much they agree on. The boy at the roadhouse—the one I regretted speaking to—was my brother.
“And you ran to your father’s side when he collapsed, and you tried to help him. It was just the three of you there with the princess—you, your brother, and your father. That’s the truth. I swear it.”
“Astrid, listen to me.” Now the stranger is growing frantic. Whatever defenses he has against my Cientia, they are failing him. He is awash in the kind of desperation I felt in the woman who tried to throw me from the lighthouse, just before she fell.
But still, I don’t feel his grief.
“This person is your competitor,” he says, in a tone with more disdain and contempt than an Outsider should be able to muster. “He’s going to say whatever he has to, to hold you back. I know where this clue points, and I will take you there right now. I’ll take you to the clue after that, and the clue after that, until you’ve won. All you have to do is come with me now.” He pauses, waiting for my response. “Right now, Astrid. We should go now, before any others find this clue.”
“Did any racers come out here before us?”
“A few. They went back to the outpost, to wait for a train, I suppose. But you can’t go back there, Astrid. The Authority is searching for you. Your only choice is to trust me.”
“Not true,” says Darius. “I know where this clue points as well. You can come with me. We’ll flag the next train—”
“There are no trains,” growls the stranger. But as if on cue, I hear a whistle, far away, and the screech of wheels on rails. We all turn, as if called by the sound, and look toward the horizon.
But nothing appears.
“You heard that, right? There’s a train out there,” says Darius. “If we hurry, we can catch it.”
Both of them stare at me, waiting for me to choose who to trust. And yet I feel totally alone. Their emotions are like mirrors of each other. In both of them I feel urgency and fear and some hidden secret they are keeping from me.
The truth is, I trust neither one of them.
“Where are we going?” I ask Darius. Sand sticks to my lips. I feel it in my mouth, grinding between my teeth when I talk. “If you know the solution to this clue, tell me now.”
Darius looks from me to the stranger and back again. His eyes, rimmed in purple shadows by fatigue, are still bright with attention. “The Village of Falling Leaf. It’s on the Northern Rail Extension.” I stare back blankly, and he must see my confusion at how he could know this, because he adds, “I saw it on the wall map, beneath the clock inside the station.”
I consider this. A falling leaf does, in fact, fit the clue. Though I am beautiful to the eye, I portend death. “So what’s the front door of a village?” I ask.
“The gate? I’m still working on that part.” Darius frowns a bit, and I’m not sure if it’s because he can’t figure this piece of the clue, or because the hot wind is peppering his face with dust.
The train whistle sounds again, and to my anxious ears, it sounds like a warning. I wish I could tell which of these two boys it’s warning me against.
Another noise interrupts the wind, but this one comes from behind us. Voices. We all shade our eyes and stare at a small group of people striding toward us from the direction of the previous sign. As they get closer, I recognize them.
“Mr. and Mrs. Arrogance,” Darius says.
He’s right, and they’re not alone. They have at least three racers with them.
“I’m out of time,” says my so-called brother, and my heart speeds up. The choice I couldn’t bring myself to make is about to be made for me. “You can still come with me, but it’s now or never.”
“But if you’re in such a hurry,” I say, and already this stranger looks different to me. His well-fed face is hardening. His round eyes are narrowing. “How is it you have time to take me to Falling Leaf, and the clue after that, and the clue after that?”
“I would have made time, if you hadn’t been so ungrateful. You’ve always been ungrateful, and you always will be. Right up until this race kills you.” Again, it feels like he’s remembering me. But that doesn’t prove he’s my brother. The voices of the approaching racers are growing louder. This boy who claims to be my brother scowls at me, and then he shoves a canteen at me. “If you won’t accept any other help from me, at least take this.”
I hesitate, but Darius, of all people, accepts the canteen on my behalf. “I’ll hold that for Astrid,” he says. He’s already carrying the one I got from Jane, since I’m weighed down by both the bag and the coat.
The stranger hands the canteen to Darius, but he smiles at me. I notice a pool of sweat in the cleft above his upper lip. “Good luck.” He picks up his own canteen and starts out across the sand, heading toward the barracks. At least I think that’s where the barracks are.
I watch him recede into a veil of blowing sand, noticing something familiar about his walk.
Once he’s gone, I say to Darius, “I still feel a secret.”
He narrows his eyes in the direction of the approaching voices. “Everyone has secrets, Astrid,” he says.
I haven’t heard the train whistle since Darius told me the solution to the riddle, but we need to move before these others reach this sign. “There’s enough sand in the air that I think we might not be seen,” I say. “But we should run, if we can.”
So we run side by side, deeper into the desert. The secret is still there, and I can’t help but worry that I’ve chosen to trust the wrong boy.
The voices of the other racers fade behind us. The black sand radiates heat, making it feel like we’re moving through an oven. Our steps slow to a walk. Through the haze, nothing interrupts my view to the horizon. No tracks appear, or even the distant silhouette of a train. High over our heads, clouds hang like white gauze torn into strips to reveal a darkening blue sky. The darker the sky, the heavier the weight I’m carrying in the pit of my stomach.
I know I won’t survive another night like last night. We have to find that train. “Could you pass me a drink?” I say.
I draw a deep gulp from the canteen Darius hands me, but it comes right back up.
I drop to my knees, gagging and coughing and choking, spewing liquid all over the ground, a black puddle on black sand. “Not . . . ,” I sputter when I finally stop coughing enough to speak, “water.”
Darius crouches beside me and runs a hand across my back. “What’s happening?” he starts, but I don’t let him finish. I jump to my feet as if his touch burns worse than the poison in the canteen.
“It’s not water!” I say, and I notice my voice, loud and high, like it’s someone else’s voice.
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But we are alone, just us two.
“Why did you give me that canteen? Why didn’t you give me the one I’ve been drinking from all day?”
“No reason . . .” Darius, still on his knees, stares up at me, wide-eyed. “They’re both your canteens. I just handed you whichever—”
“Did you? Here, in the middle of the desert? Where no one would see me die?” My thoughts spin wildly through my head. There’s only one winner. Darius said so himself. “And that stranger . . . You were so hesitant to trust him. You called him a liar. But when he offered a canteen—this canteen—you were the one who took it from him.” I pace a circle around Darius, not knowing where to go. “Perhaps he’s actually your brother. I mean, I took your advice, and here we are, alone, surrounded by sand. Did you figure you would kill me here, before I could become a threat to you?”
Instinct is steering me now, and it turns me inward, to check my Cientia. I sense cold fear and a heavy secret.
“Maybe you remembered seeing me at the Apple Carnival,” I say. “Maybe you didn’t. Either way, you’re still keeping a secret from me.” I pause to catch my breath, but not long enough to let him speak. “I was right not to trust the boy who claimed to be my brother, but I shouldn’t have trusted you either.”
The shrill whistle comes again. As quick as a shift in the wind, my attention swings to the distant dunes ahead of us. There, like a ghost materializing out of fog, a train appears out of the blowing grit, spraying sand up on either side as it parts the desert in two. It’s streamlined and metallic and shockingly clean, considering the dirt all around it. The tracks it rides had been buried beneath blowing sand, but the train is like a broom, sweeping the rails clean.
Darius runs toward it, waving his arms wildly to catch the engineer’s attention. It works, I guess, because the whir of the wheels slows to a clack clack clack as the train comes to a stop.
I should feel relieved. Instead, I feel dread at the thought of boarding this train with a boy I don’t trust.
Twenty-One
Darius doesn’t slow until he’s right up alongside the engine. A wad of mackels ripples in the breeze as he shakes his fist at the tinted windshield. The thick metal door opens, but the engineer comes only a half step through. “Sorry,” she calls, looking from Darius to me and back again. “We’re not taking on passengers.”
“We’ve got money,” Darius calls.
“Doesn’t matter.”
The door clangs shut, an ominous sound. The whistle blares again, and maybe it’s because I’m desperate or maybe it’s because I can’t think of anything else to do to hold a hulking train in place, but I step onto the tracks.
I balance, one foot on each rail, staring into that tinted glass windshield from just fifty yards away. In that glass, I see the reflection of fast-moving clouds, but I know the engineer is peering back at me.
At least I hope she is.
The wind gusts at my back, but I will not be moved.
There is an agonizingly long wait, during which Darius comes to stand beside me but doesn’t speak. The train glows like a silver snake sunning itself, and the sky reflected in its windshield goes from cloud-strewn to bright blue to cloud-strewn again. “I suppose every minute the train stands still is a victory,” Darius says finally.
And then the door opens again. A narrow set of steps reaches down to the sand from the door, and the engineer steps aside to let a different young woman descend. Her skin glows where the sunlight touches it. Brown ringlets fall to her shoulders, and her big round eyes are almost innocent. She is beautiful, in that way a storm out on the horizon is beautiful.
There’s an air of authority in her walk, like she owns these tracks and I have some nerve standing on them.
“What are you doing this far from the outpost?” she asks. She’s small but she looks strong, and she wears heavy boots laced up to her knees that make her seem rooted, like she’d be difficult to knock down. “You’d better turn around before the sun goes down—”
“We’re racers,” I say. “The next checkpoint is the Village of Falling Leaf. We’re looking to secure passage there on a train.”
“Secure passage?” She sticks out her chin and looks me up and down, as if somewhere on my body is an explanation of how I got to be so stupid. “You’re going to have to turn around,” she says. She’s awash in protectiveness, but protective of what? Could there be something special about this train? “Go back to the outpost. Wait for a train there.”
“We’re not going to be able to do that,” I say.
“Well, then stay out here in the desert and die for all I care,” she says, “but you’re going to have to get off these tracks.”
She’s planning her move—I feel it like a slap to my face. In my mind’s eye I see her grabbing me by the arm and yanking me off the rails. Before she can raise a hand I’m down on the ground, sand splashing up into my eyes as I kick at those tall boots and shove her legs out from under her. She lands hard on her back, and the sound of the breath knocked from her lungs puts a smile on my lips. I’m sweaty and dirty and now sand coats my arms and legs, but the look on her face is worth the misery. While confusion and realization swirl around us like a dust storm—while this girl figures out that I am not exactly what I first appeared to be—I jump back up onto the tracks.
“Astrid?” The door to the train has opened again and a man steps out, dark hair rippling in the wind. He wears a jacket and trousers that are a bit rumpled, but he’s still dressed in a suit, and that tells me he cares about the impression he makes. Like the girl, he’s not lacking in swagger.
“Another stranger who knows my name,” I say. I think he expected to shock me, but I’ve gotten used to this by now.
But then he says, “No one told me you were in the race,” which catches my attention much more than the simple fact that he recognizes me. Because it means he knew me beforehand, and not from the publicity since the race started.
“You know her?” says the woman, pinning me down with her big round eyes.
“Well enough.” He gives his head a small shake. “I really can’t believe it. You look so different.” He moves in closer. Dark eyes stare out from under thick, arched brows, as if he is confirming that I am the girl he remembers. He nods—not for anyone else, more for himself. “All right then,” he says.
I want to fight. I think I always want to fight. But he’s done. He simply turns and strides toward the train, and the girl follows. I’m still straddling the tracks when he calls back over his shoulder. “Well,” he says. “What are you waiting for?”
I exchange a brief, confused glance with Darius, and then we both shuffle forward after them. The young man is an indecipherable swirl of emotions as he stands at the top of the narrow steps. The wind catches his jacket as he holds the door open for Darius and me to come inside the train.
“Wait, what?” The engineer gives our host a questioning look, the kind you’d give someone who just played a very bad card. Everything about her is sharp—a sharp glare shooting out from under sharply cut bangs, cheekbones so sharp you could cut glass with them. “You’re inviting them in?”
“Don’t mind her,” he says to me. And then to her, “This is Astrid.”
“Astrid?” I can tell by her tone she’s heard my name before.
“Yes, that Astrid.” Our host grins as the engineer cocks her head at an angle, considering me. Then he turns to Darius. “And you are?”
Darius hesitates, then reluctantly gives his name.
“Astrid and Darius,” says our host. “Sorry for the reception. We rarely allow visitors.”
“We never allow visitors.” The engineer’s eyes shift between me and our host, and then she shakes her head. “And we never should,” she says.
“Relax. I have my reasons.”
We are led through the engineer’s cabin, with its austere control panels and blinking lights, into a room with cloth-lined walls and thickly padded chairs covered in patterned fabrics of navy
blue and bright gold. It’s all very regal—the kind of room where a head of state might issue execution orders. Our host gestures to a slender couch. Darius and I exchange a fleeting look before we sit.
“This is a cozy place you’ve got here,” I say, “but we don’t have time for casual conversation. We need to get to Falling Leaf.”
“We have money,” Darius adds, and I’m relieved to hear him say we. I may not trust him, but for now I need the negotiating power of the cash he’s carrying.
“I might as well tell you right away, so there’s no confusion,” our host says. He’s not very old. Twenty at the most. “We’re not heading in the direction of Falling Leaf, and even if we were, I wouldn’t take you there. I despise the Race of Oblivion and won’t help anyone to win it.”
“Oh, you despise the race?” I ask. “Easy enough for a rich Enchanted.” Alarm rises in Darius. I think he’s afraid I’ll get us kicked off the train.
“What makes you so sure we’re Enchanteds?” our host asks.
“For starters, no embeds—”
“Maybe we’re citizen Outsiders.”
“With a private train? Stop toying with me,” I say. “It’s clear you know me, so just tell me who you are and where you know me from.”
Our host smirks. “Still bossy, I see,” he says.
“Stop that—”
“Stop what?”
“Stop playing. Tell me who you are . . . who I am. No one will find out you helped us—”
“Trust me, I’m not afraid of the Authority coming after me for helping a couple of racers. If they catch up with me, you two will be the least of my worries.”
He gets to his feet and flips his hair from his eyes. Arrogance pours off him. Before I can say anything else, he glances at the two women and cocks his head toward the door. The three of them file out without another word.
Darius tries the doors at both ends of the train car. Both are locked.
“If they’re going to hold us here, the least they could do is feed us,” Darius says.
I open my bag and pull out the bread I took from the woman Jane killed. It’s dry and probably stale, but I break off a piece and hand it to Darius before taking a piece for myself. We both eat without complaint, but I can’t sit still. I eat while I pace.
Crown of Oblivion Page 16
