Such a Daring Endeavor

by Cortney Pearson

  Shouts resound outside. Dircey snaps her head in Ren’s direction.

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” Ren cries, gesturing to the chair. “I only—”

  “I knew it,” Dircey grumbles, marching toward Ren, one hand upturning her shirt to retrieve the knife tucked into her belt. “I knew you were a traitor.”

  A window shatters, and four Arcs pile into the large, abandoned foyer. The first two wield briefswords. They pause only for a moment to scan the area, but their faces smirk with satisfaction the minute they see Ren and me. One with dark hair, pockmarked skin, and a magitat below his ear jerks the Xian claw free from his belt, snarling in my direction.

  “It’s her,” he says. “Ain’t the general been looking for her?”

  The other, a large man with blond hair and a ring through his nose, digs a small device from his pocket. The same device used outside the gate to check people’s magic levels. He holds it up, guiding it in each of our directions.

  “Not just her. They’re all tainted!” he shouts.

  “You axrat, Ren Csille,” Dircey calls over her shoulder as she prepares to meet the oncoming raiders. Balls of light collect in her palms. “I gave you a chance, and you betrayed us at the first shot!”

  “I didn’t call them here!” Ren yells.

  I run forward, arms outstretched and magic coiling along my arms, and smack the device from the blond one’s grasp.

  The pockmarked soldier glowers at me. “You’re the one they’re after, aren’t you?”

  “Guess you’re not going to find out.” I bow for his waist to practice the takedown Talon taught me. I’m rusty—the move doesn’t give the result I know it should, but it knocks him off-guard enough for me to follow with an elbow to his nose.

  Micro takes the Arc with the claw down with a heavy fist; Dircey goes to his side, dodging a swing from a briefsword. It’s clear none of them have Talon’s footwork, or his quick reflexes and skill at prejudging an opponent’s moves. But still, they’re good.

  The Arc’s blade slices against Micro’s side, marring it with a huge gash. Dircey growls, baring her teeth. Her magic sizzles on impact, instantly shocking and freezing the Arc’s movements. He stumbles to the floor, giving Micro a chance to smash his face with a thick boot. Dircey turns to heal Micro’s gash.

  Ren makes it to his feet and manages to take on two soldiers at once. I propel my palm at the remaining soldier’s jaw, knocking him back before going to my brother’s side.

  “Dircey thinks you called them here? How could they have gotten here so fast?”

  “Don’t ask me!” Ren snaps.

  I try to remember what I did in the other fights I’ve had. After the soldier chased me down, I broke her arm and left her unconscious near the thruway entrance. Things had come so naturally. If only I knew how to make that happen again.

  Another soldier attempts to fight with Ren, and they do well enough to hold each other back. It’s clear he’s a newer recruit. His feet are all wrong; he’s too absorbed with Ren’s fists, not watching the motion of Ren’s body instead and gauging his tactics accordingly. Still, he manages to knock Ren down.

  The fear, the panic that flooded me the first time Ren was taken, charges back into me. They can’t have him again, not after all I went through to get him back. It came naturally, I think, how did I get it to come naturally?

  Maybe it’s Talon. Maybe I need him nearby. Then again, I fought that female soldier. And Tyrus and Gwynn, and Talon wasn’t there then.

  Dircey falters after a fist to her face. Blood shoots from her mouth, and she staggers back toward the chair Ren moved, her hand colliding with the shattered bits of glass from the broken windows. Her arms shake several times before she collapses. One Arc is down as well, while another cowers in a corner, speaking into an aud.

  There’s only one person he could be calling.

  My magic triggers to life, whipping upward like a snake, fangs bared and dripping with venom. I rush past Micro kneeling near Dircey and whirl my hands above my head, lashing magic through the air as though winding it up, coiling it to spring in the soldier’s direction. It snaps at the release of my hands, vaulting the soldier back until he hits the wall, crackling the plaster even more and winning several chunks of dislocated wall on his head before slumping down.

  Dircey is propped limply in Micro’s arms. She and the gatekeeper stare at the dead soldier near them, then across to the other two Ren and I took out.

  “Dircey, I swear,” says Ren, his shoulders heaving. Blood drips down his lip and on his hands. “I didn’t call them here.”

  Her black-and-white hair dangles down her left shoulder in its messy braid. She lost her hat through the ambush, and more hair falls in her face, which is dripping with blood. She wipes her nose with the back of a hand. Micro offers a hand for support, and with his help, she sits up straighter.

  “Get back in that room, Csille,” she says.

  I dab at Ren’s temple with wet napkins from the tray still discarded near the door and glance toward the window. We had no warning. This is Black Vault; I thought they were supposed to be this impermeable superpower. Ren winces, and I pull back to find a bruise budding just below his eye.

  “Where did they come from?” I ask, nursing my shoulder where the Arc with the pockmarks slammed into me.

  Ren lowers the button-up shirt that was once his Arcaian uniform and uses it to stem the blood from his lip. If only we had some ice. If only I knew how to heal. “It had to have been a raid. The Arcaians are determined to enslave every citizen in the city.”

  “So they saw your magic through the window…”

  “And came running,” Ren finishes, staring at the dabs of blood on his wadded-up shirt. “It was coincidental. But now it looks like I summoned them.”

  As though we need another reason for these Vaulters to keep us in here. Sunlight fades from our room, and silence paces the floorboards.

  “I know you didn’t. And if Dircey has any sense, she will too. She can’t keep us in here forever.”

  He shakes his head and then winces. “She won’t. They’ve got to leave now. That Arc reported us—we don’t have long before they send a whole brigade here.”

  I rise, nursing my shoulder. “Ugh, this is maddening!”

  Ren winces again, lowering himself to his cot. “I agree, but there isn’t much we can do about it.”

  Frustration seethes through, lighting my blood. It’s nonsense. I’ve done nothing wrong, and the longer we stew in here, who knows what’s happening to Talon in the palace? If they’re going to be moving us soon, why can’t we just leave now?

  But Ren’s eyes are closed, his hands resting on his chest. I let my gaze linger for a moment on his long legs and socked feet, on the bruise shining near his eye. His lip is swollen too. He got it worse than I did.

  “They won’t kill Haraway tonight, Ambry,” he says, his voice croaky. “Get some sleep. You need it.”

  I plunk down on my own cot—if it can be called that. It might as well be a table for all the comfort it provides right now.

  Ren might be able to sleep, but I can’t. Though the Arcs who found us are dead and probably being disposed of right now, the fight still hasn’t ended for me. I saw enough of that foyer out there to find the exit. But I have to be certain Dircey and Micro won’t be there to catch me sneaking out.

  Darkness settles in, along with the sounds of the city. Ren’s rhythmic breathing soon fills the space. Dircey and the others, they’ll sleep soon, I tell myself. Not much longer now. I let my lids rest, determined to stay awake in the meantime, determined to master my thoughts.

  When I wake to a soft dusting of light through the window, I bolt as if from a cold plunge of water. Hair mats against my forehead, and I touch my chest and reorient myself with the crumbling ceiling. Ren is still breathing gently in the cot across from me, a slight snore on his exhale.

  The final remnant of a dream still lingers. Talon, standing before me,
as handsome as ever, riddled with light scars and his hands hugged by fingerless black gloves. Everything about him was the same—the force of his glance, the hunter’s gait of his boots crunching the ground—except the shackles circling his wrists and keeping his hands inches in front of his stomach.

  Shackles.

  While I sleep, he’s in shackles. What am I still doing here?

  I hurry to slip into my jeans—which I sloughed off beneath the covers, hoping Ren wouldn’t notice. I check out the empty street outside, the streetlamps still pouring light in various corners.

  The door is locked, but that’s not anything to hold me back, not while everyone is hopefully still sleeping. With a sure inhale and a stem of magic, I coerce the lock into a silent undoing and turn the knob as quietly as I can.

  I enter into the expansive foyer, recognizing the bloodstains on the floor, the line-up of doors and the columns near the descending stairs. Even as I tiptoe, my steps echo on the marble.

  “You shouldn’t have been able to get out of that room.”

  Dircey stands behind me in baggy pajama pants and a tank top. Her black-and-white hair hangs loose this time, the top is white, the bottom layers slowly fading to black and blending with her dark tank.

  “It wasn’t Ren,” I say, all nerves. “He’s on your side.”

  To my surprise, Dircey nods. “Those soldiers didn’t go for us. The one Micro stopped was heading for you two. That Arc couldn’t have sensed Micro’s magic. The talisman he wears protects him from their detection.”

  “So you believe me? Us?”

  “Why else did they focus on you two? We’re Black Vault, little sister. Tyrus has been after me for years. Yet those soldiers headed straight for the Csilles.”

  I don’t say anything.

  Dircey steps closer, looking up at me.

  “They’re newer soldiers; they’ve got to be. They didn’t recognize me or Micro. Tyrus didn’t send them specifically for us, and they wouldn’t have been after you and Ren if Ren had been the one to summon them here.”

  “We didn’t summon them. We’ve stayed in that room. We’ve done everything you asked.”

  Dircey looks down her nose at me. “You really got his magic back,” she says, though it’s not a question. More like an acceptance.

  It’s my turn to nod. I thought she was younger, but this close up I catch the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, and the laugh lines in her cheeks.

  “Better get some sleep, little sister,” she says before padding off down the hall.

  I pause for the smallest moment, considering the doors, the crumbling walls and marble floor. I’m not about to go back to sleep. Not now that she’s allowing me out. So I follow her.

  Dircey leads me down the stairs and into the kitchen area. A dismal amount of cupboard space joins a sink and small black fridge. It looks as if this could once have been a break room of some kind. Dircey sits at one of the two small, round tables in the room’s center while a food-warmer slowly rotates to heat something that smells of blueberries. Glowing near the light switch, the canteen’s levels dissipate the slightest bit as the machine beeps.

  A girl with ice-white hair twisted into several braids across her head, with the remainder pooling down her back, rises from the other table, leaving a book, a pair of glasses, and a steaming mug behind. She cuts me off on her way to retrieve her blueberry pastry from the food-warmer.

  “Morning, Ayso,” Dircey says to the girl.

  Ayso gives Dircey a wave. “Morning.” Then with a small smile in my direction and a slight limp, she takes her pastry back to the table.

  Dircey clears her throat, capturing my attention. She directs her hand to the empty seat beside her, at a completely different table.

  A smell I can’t exactly place swirls from the steaming cup in her hand. Dircey mixes a few things into her drink and chugs it back, hacking at the taste.

  “Tastes bad?” I ask, sitting across from her, trying to think of a way to broach the subject.

  “This keeps me from just breathing,” Dircey says, tipping the cup toward me to display a grayish-green liquid.

  “You mean…” I’m not quite sure how to ask the question. It keeps her from just breathing?

  “Without this I’m like a shell, all motion but with nothing on the inside.”

  “Oh.” Disappointment settles in. I hoped to find someone else like me among them. Someone who could feel regardless of having magic. But so far it looks like I’m the only one.

  “And you sell that?”

  One of her delicate brows rises. “I came up with it—I keep it,” she says.

  Dircey gestures to Ayso whose attention is currently trapped by the book next to her half-eaten pastry. She’s restored the glasses to her nose. “Ayso has been growing the basole plant for some time now, so she takes it too.”

  My brows furrow. “I thought that plant was deadly.”

  “It is deadly,” Ayso says, speaking for the first time since I entered the break room. She pushes the thick-rimmed glasses onto her nose with her middle finger. “When ingested without being primed first, anyway. I strip it of its prime.”

  “Its…prime?” I don’t remember reading about that.

  “The deadly parts,” Ayso explains. “Plants have a primary element that makes them what they are. Basole is poisonous; I just help Dircey de-poison it.”

  Dircey gulps down the last of the drink before tossing the cup into the garbage behind me. “Treasures aren’t meant to be shared,” she says with a wink. “And Ayso is a treasure, with the way she can work the magic out of plants. Don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  Ayso ignores her praise and resumes eating her breakfast and poring over the dense book beside her bowl. I hoped to talk to these people, to see what makes them similar to me, why we can all feel. I should have known their emotions were manufactured.

  Ren stops in the doorway, his hands on either side of the jamb. His mouth drops as if he wants to speak but isn’t sure what to say. It’s no wonder he’s surprised, waking up to find me gone and his prison door for the past three days suddenly open.

  “Morning,” says Dircey with a grin.

  “What’s going on?” he asks, stepping in. “I thought you didn’t trust me.”

  “They believe us,” I say before Dircey gets a chance.

  Ren rubs a hand over his chin, which prickles with several days’ growth. “Okay…” he says as if waiting for more. “Good, ‘cause I’m starving.” He struts toward the fridge and checks out its insides. Dircey gives me a shrug.

  “We don’t have much,” she says to me, “but you’re welcome to it.”

  “Thank you,” I say. I join my brother, taking an apple from the basket near the fridge.

  At that, a child enters the room. I take a bite of my apple, its juices bursting over my tongue. No, not a child—a nymph. The tiny creature’s limbs aren’t short in the way that children’s are, that shows they still have room to grow. She’s full-grown, a woman in miniature. Thin wings pulse between her shoulder blades, and she walks like the sirens do, as though it’s for show and not really a necessity.

  “Cadie,” says Ren in acknowledgment.

  “Let you out, have they?” says the small creature. I take in her neon purple hair, remembering her telling me to wait my turn, that her ink was in short supply.

  “You give the magitats,” I say stupidly. I’m not sure why, but the nymph intimidates me. Perhaps it’s her tiny size that makes her that much more of a mystery.

  Ren clears his throat as if embarrassed. Dircey looks amused.

  “From what I hear,” says the nymph, “you don’t need one.”

  “Cadie, this is—” Ren gestures.

  “Your sister. Yeah, I know, and anyone who can sneak magic back out after those vrecking claws can keep her distance from me.”

  I look to Dircey for direction.

  “See this finger?” says Cadie. “It can do the same things those Xians can. I don’
t need any humans thinking they can subvert me.”

  “Don’t mind her,” Ren says. “Cadie’s known for being touchy.”

  “Only because you wouldn’t stop pestering me, Ren Csille.”

  “No, I don’t want a magitat,” I tell the nymph. It’s the first time I’ve ever really talked to one beyond a simple greeting. Our neighbors, the Hollys, weren’t exactly friendly. “But I do need a way into the Triad Palace.”

  The soft chatter halts almost at once. Dircey rests a palm on the table. Ayso actually glances up from her book. Though their gazes make me feel smaller, I keep going.

  “There’s no way I can get in on my own. I need help. A map, anything.”

  Dircey clears her throat again and juts her chin toward the door. Ayso taps her glasses higher on her nose with a middle finger before closing her book, and together she and Cadie leave us. Dircey readjusts herself so that instead of sitting, she crouches on her toes on the chair and interlocks her fingers.

  “That’s right into the lion’s den, little sister,” she says. “I’d avoid the Triad like a disease.”

  “I’m going, so if you know of some way I’d really appreciate it,” I say. “Maybe you have something like the basole plant that can make me stronger. Or that can make me turn invisible, like you did with that golden outline,” I suggest to Ren. The night Gwynn and I met him outside the ice cream shop, he shielded us from being seen by the guards on the street.

  It’s about time for some lesson in magic usage, now that I have it. I missed out on so much in school while I was in teaching the newly Torrented. Tyrus used the golden outline against me the last time I saw him. Talon did it too, come to think of it, under the bleachers at my school.

  “I’m not sure I can maintain it long enough to get us in there and keep us hidden,” says Ren.

  I return my attention to Dircey. “Please, my friend is there. They’re going to kill him any day. It’s my fault he got caught. I promise I won’t betray any of you. But I’ve got to go. Do you have a layout of the Triad, maybe?”

  “It’s not like I have blueprints lying around,” says Dircey.

  “I don’t have blueprints, but I spent time as Tyrus’s guard there,” Ren says in offering. Dircey stands at this admission and leaves the two of us to ourselves.