Instantly, the cool stream churning in my bones withers. My magic pinches out into nothing but steam like a fire doused with water. I jab an elbow back against the man holding me. He shoves me to the stone, my palms scraping against the grit. I wheel around to see the soldier’s single golden tooth inserted among the white ones of his menacing smile. His nametag reads, Naylor.
Behind him I catch sight of Ren in the arms of a soldier and being herded toward the tunnel.
“No you don’t,” Shasa calls out, but not in time to stop them. So she tails, chasing after the soldiers who have my brother.
I debate following, but I can’t leave Talon here. And without magic, I don’t stand a chance against them. I attempt for it again, but the same empty stream responds, blowing cool air through my bones and sending goosebumps along my skin in the process.
Tyrus crouches at Talon’s feet. Naylor and Lewis close in behind their leader. Slowly, Talon bends one leg, then another. He’s healing. Not fast enough, though.
“Stay away from him,” I cry, knowing it won’t do any good. I search the area, begging for something—anything—I can use to get them away from him.
Tyrus interlocks his fingers, elbows resting on his knees. “They healed you, did they? Good. I’ll need you whole for this anyway.”
“You don’t want to do this,” says Talon, attempting to push up from the floor.
The smile is evident in Tyrus’s voice as he presses Talon back down with a hand on his shoulder. “I can’t let you just leave, son. Not after what you did the last time. I banked everything I had on you, and you let me down.”
“You banked everything you had on your schemes. I wanted no part in it anymore.”
Tyrus sniffs and, quicker than a snap, his purple-tinged hand goes to Talon’s throat. While Tyrus is fast, Talon is still faster. One hand on Tyrus’s wrist, Talon grips him just below the elbow and knocks the Arcaian behind the ear, the chains from his shackles clinking.
Tyrus crumples to the ground. Talon succeeds at pushing himself up, but his knees give way almost instantly. Naylor and Lewis move in, pinning him against the wall. Lewis punches Talon in the stomach, releasing him to buckle back down to the stone grime. At a lower vantage point, Talon dives for Lewis’s legs, knocking the Arc so hard he timbers like a tree trunk. He smacks his head against the stone and lies, unmoving.
Naylor rubs the back of Tyrus’s lolling head, chafing his back, attempting to revive him. Talon drags himself upward again, while Naylor snatches the guard’s fallen blade and drives it toward Talon’s side. Talon sniffs, chains clinking as he tries to dodge, but his shackles serve their purpose, shortening his motion. He doesn’t make it in time to block the knife plunging hard into his thigh.
“Talon!” I cry as he lets out a groan.
I glance around, frantic. The door to the secret tunnel still stands ajar, leaving the room startlingly empty. My stomach churns. I hope Ren is safe. And Shasa, too, for that matter.
Tyrus rises shakily to his booted feet, stomping hard on Talon’s newly healed knee. Talon cries out, gripping his leg and toppling over in pain. Blood continues oozing from the knife wound in his thigh.
I pry at the Prones on my wrists, moving in to help, but Tyrus backhands me. I stumble back into a pair of soldiers who grip me from behind and drag me to where Talon still lies crumpled on the floor, blood collecting in his hands. I fight and struggle, but they hold me fast.
“Let her go,” Talon says through his teeth, earning a laugh from Tyrus.
Talon’s right leg juts out at an odd angle. To my surprise, the Arcaian leader shoots purple magic into the wound, siphoning away the blood and leaving him whole. With one hand, Tyrus lifts him effortlessly to his feet.
“Haraway’s right,” the soldier to my right says. “She’s in the way. Shall we kill her, sir?” His grip tightens around my arm, and the claw at his belt click clicks.
My pulse thunders. A smile trails the corner of Tyrus’s mouth upward and adds a gleam in his eyes, which shift back and forth between Talon and me.
“I think she’ll be interested to see Haraway’s…flaws,” Tyrus says. “Odis, you have your camera?”
I almost forgot about the soldier who brought in the cases. During our little skirmish, he set up equipment near the door they battered open. A tripod stand now holds a large screen, facing directly at us. Several cords snake along the corner, and what looks like a lantern on a thin metal stand also flags the darkened corner. Discomfort lingers behind his eyes, but Odis adjusts his uniform, standing straight before answering, “Yes, sir.”
Tyrus nods. “Prepare to film here.”
***
Ren pries at the hands around him when footsteps hit his ears. Shasa and her palm light come into view in the narrow space.
“Duck!” she cries.
Ren drops, making himself dead weight in the soldier’s grasp. Shasa chucks one of her throwing knives directly where he was standing seconds before. The knife hits its target. The soldier lets out a grunt before toppling over.
“Come on,” she says, taking Ren’s hand and stepping over the fallen soldier.
The tunnel is dark, but Shasa’s light illuminates the way now. She glances back before turning a corner. Adrenaline pumping, Ren races after her, only to be cut short when her hand darts out to seize his shirt. Before he knows it he’s ensconced tightly against her in an niche in the stone. She kills the light in her hand, cloaking them in blackness. All he can hear is her breathing.
Her body is warm in this small space, her chest colliding against his with every breath she takes.
“Shasa, what are we—”
“I can’t believe you’re the brother,” she whispers. “You’re the reason this all got messed up in the first place. And to think I was actually starting to like you!”
He struggles to follow her train of thought. “Like me? As in—”
She shoves against his chest. “Talon’s breaking his oath, who says I can’t? I was seriously considering it with you, you futz. And now you go and be related to the girl I hate more than anyone else? Why doesn’t anything go my way?” she asks as though she expects an answer.
“Um…”
“Well?”
He blinks, wishing he could see her face, but the darkness is deep. He might as well keep his eyes closed for all the good it does him. “Look, I’d love to hear your dark ruminations—and we can definitely go back to that part where you said you liked me—but shouldn’t we get out of here first?”
“First Talon being totally useless. Now you…wait a minute…” She pauses, planting a hand on his chest as if struck by some realization.
“Have we lost them?” he asks, attempting to peer out.
She pats his chest. Her voice is fraught with discovery. “You can help me.”
“I can what?”
“I came to get Talon. I can’t attack Craven and neither can Jo—and Solomus is pretty much useless with his magic depleted, and considering how he almost killed her the last time he tried to rescue us, so I was going to have Talon kill him for me, but you…”
“You know I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Jomeini!” Shasa says it as if that one word will make everything clear.
“Who?”
She flicks her light back on. Ren has to blink a few times to adjust to the palm light’s small beam. Shasa’s eyes gleam up toward him, pooling wide, vulnerable and welcoming. He feels his knees grow weak under that gaze.
“Ren, I need your help. Will you help me?”
He’s heard of Talon Haraway’s skill, of his magical blood that enhances both wits and abilities, but this is the first time he’s ever seen a Feihrian in action. Shasa knocked that soldier out with a single, well-placed knife. What can she possibly need Ren’s help with?
She peers out around the corner, one hand resting on his stomach. Angels.
“I think they’ve gone the other direction,” she says in that accent of hers. “We have
to go now.”
“We?”
She fists his shirt, a small hint of desperation in her voice. “Please. Please say you’ll help me.”
Uncertainty crawls its way up Ren’s spine. Sure, this girl is intoxicating and more intriguing by the minute, but he hardly knows her. “I can’t abandon my sister. And what about Talon? They need our help.”
Shasa swears. “Solomus is waiting down there for me. I was supposed to bring Talon, he’s the only one who can fight me off—”
Ren grasps her wrists this time. There’s only so much vague rambling a man can take. “You have got to explain what you’re talking about,” he says.
Shasa breaks from his grip. “Ambry is with Talon. She couldn’t be in more capable hands. I have one more shot at rescuing my friend who is about to be taken from this country for good and die for all I know. We don’t stand much of a chance of getting Ambry and Talon out if we go back in there right now, not with Tyrus there. But you and I can help them in another way, if you come with me. Once I get my magic back, once we have the maiden wizard back with her magic, we can go back for them.”
“The maiden wizard?”
“My friend! Jomeini Straylark.”
Ren’s head spins. Dismay stamps out all coherent thought. “Your friend—the one you want me to help you rescue—is the maiden wizard?” He thought all the wizards were dead.
Two soldiers round the corner with lights in hand. Ren stiffens at the sound, his heart instantly thrashing.
“They’re down here!” one of them cries.
“Enough already,” Shasa grumbles. Instead of running away as Ren expects, Shasa barrels in, latching onto arms and wrists, twisting them like toys, booting one to the ground and stomping directly onto his nose. A quick crunching sound follows, and Ren doesn’t hesitate to join her.
He startles for a moment when he realizes it’s Norwidge, the guard who was stationed across the hall from Tyrus’s chambers. Ren knows these men. He knows their training. Like when he was sparring with Ambry, he can tell their skill surpasses his. But as Tyrus’s personal guard, Ren received a little training, not to mention the few tricks he picked up as a Black Vault gatekeeper. Self-defense meant survival in most cases.
He charges in with Shasa. She links her arms with his, using him as a grounding point to flip her legs and knock a soldier in the side of the head. Shasa pants over the motionless soldier for several seconds.
“What is that?” Ren bends for the aud blinking beneath the fallen Arc. It must have fallen out of the soldier’s pocket.
The screen is still lit, and Ren nearly drops the device when he sees the image. Ambry is chained to the wall—the same chain Shasa tricked Ren into before he found out who she was. A fresh bruise blossoms on her cheek, and thin Prones bracelet around each of her wrists. Talon kneels beside her, fresh blood along the legs Ren tried so hard to heal. Tyrus fists Talon’s hair, tipping his head back in order to give Ren—or more importantly, whoever this call is really for—a direct view of the boy’s face.
“Vreck it,” Shasa says, taking the aud from Ren and tucking it into her pocket. “We’ve got to move.”
Ren pauses. He can’t remember exactly which direction they came from, but he knows he can’t leave his sister.
“We can’t leave them in there,” he says. After several seconds Ren settles on a direction when Shasa’s before him once more, her hands on his elbows. He catches the fervent gleam in her eyes.
“That’s why we’ve got to move,” she says.
My shoulder throbs, my face stinging from Tyrus’s backhand. And the shackles now around the Prones on my wrists securing me to a metal hook in the wall aren’t exactly light. Tyrus paces, waiting for Odis to complete his set up. Soon the boy’s hand glistens around the black camera, propping the machine on his shoulder. The screen on its podium flicks on.
I can’t fathom why Tyrus needs broadcast equipment, but if we die here it won’t be because I didn’t try. Talon flinches, attempting to rise as an image comes into view on the screen. An army of men and women flock behind three men wearing black armor.
Talon inhales. “No,” escapes his lips.
I’m too busy examining the screen’s occupants to question him. I ignore the mirror image contained in a small square in the screen’s upper left-hand corner that shows Talon and me near Tyrus’s simpering expression and focus on the three in front of the crowd.
Each one’s armor is etched with symbols and swirls of every kind, molding perfectly to fit their contours. The man on the left has curling brown hair shaved on the sides. The one to the right has a pear-shaped face encircled by a well-trimmed beard. The man in the center is older, his hair graying at the temples. The sun has darkened his skin to a tan crisp, and lines define his age to be somewhere around forty, I would guess.
“You have our attention, Blinnsdale,” says the handsome one in the center. His armor is etched like the others’, black and sleek like obsidian. But on the breastplate, three symbols are chiseled in a metallic orange, setting him apart. “Be sure you don’t waste my time.”
Tyrus takes pleasure in this. “Oh, rest assured, Bridar, this will be well worth your time. Are the rest of your people within earshot?”
“As you can see, my army stands behind me at the foot of the Arbor Mountains. We don’t cross until I see this supposed evidence you claim to have that is worthy of leaving our home.”
Bridar turns and spans his camera behind him. Hundreds—thousands—of people wearing black armor and wielding swords, scythes, and spears have collected, streaming beyond the path and filing out as far as I can see from the screen.
“Who are they?” I whisper to Talon.
Talon fights against the chains on his wrists. “Tyrus,” he says. “Don’t do this.”
The Arc turns, facing us. The two match one another’s stares, Tyrus’s with glee, Talon’s with dread and pleading. And it hits me.
They’re Feihrians.
One man wields a flag. Orange, with a single flame in the center, the silhouette of a man inside the flame. Tyrus must have gathered them like this in order to humiliate Talon before his execution.
“You axrat,” I say, struggling against the chains, their weight pulling at my shoulders. Tyrus smiles under his stupid mustache, his black eyes glistening. Wind blows through the cavern in my bones, an empty, pointless stream of nothing. My magic is plugged. I curse the thin wire cutting at my wrists.
“Your turn,” Bridar says from his screen. “Who is at your side, Blinnsdale? I heard a woman.”
“You shall see, Haraway. Soon enough.”
The name stabs like stepping on a nail, sudden, hidden, and surprising. Haraway. Talon locks eyes with me. He gives a subtle blink to my unasked question. Good light, that’s his father.
“I’ve failed,” Talon mutters under his breath.
The meaning of his words strikes me slowly. This is what Talon was trying to prevent. It was why he was there at Black Vault the night we met; it was why he cornered me at the school, why he took me with him when I was the only person who could handle the tears.
He told me it was to make things right with his people. Did he think the tears were his only chance?
“Whatever happened, you don’t need tears to fix it,” I mutter, hoping he hears the urgency in my voice. His face is a mask, but I can tell he’s struggling. Who knows when the last time he saw his father was. Does his father know he’s here beside Tyrus?
Talon shakes his head. “I think it’s clear that I can’t do this alone.”
I work to keep my voice quiet. “Those tears aren’t meant to be drunk, Talon. And in case you didn’t notice, you’re not alone.”
Talon’s eyes flit to mine, a cocktail of confusion, hope, and hurt swimming in his expression. I long to reach out to him, to touch him. He’s not mine to comfort, I remind myself. As if sharing the thought, Talon turns his head away.
Tyrus laughs at something Bridar says and then lunges, clawing Talon’s hai
r. He cranes Talon’s head back, exposing his face to the screen. I see the small square of what the Feihrians are seeing at this moment, and their reaction is one communal gasp. The unison pounding of their spears, the spreading whispers, every sound goes straight to my spine.
With Talon’s throat bared, he works to keep his eyes on the screen. “Father,” he says, but Tyrus jostles his head, silencing him. Discord continues to rustle from the onlookers in the screen. A few Feihrians let out angry shouts.
“Ah, you recognize him? This boy forced your secrets on us. He wanted to expose you.” Tyrus thrusts Talon away with the word expose.
Several men draw closer. “Lies!” someone cries. Their leader forces his hands out, keeping them at bay.
“I have footage of his training, Bridar. He insisted on being a part of this. We know your ways, because of him.”
“Silence!” Bridar commands to his group before turning back to the screen. “Blinnsdale, let me speak to my son.”
Tyrus shoves Talon forward. Talon stumbles, his legs buckling beneath him. The sight makes me cringe. Of course he hurt him again—Tyrus could never humiliate Talon like this if he were at his peak.
Instead of a look from a loving parent suddenly reunited with his lost son, uncertainty rims Bridar’s eyes, as though he isn’t sure he wants to believe what he’s seeing.
“I thought you were dead, boy.”
Talon blinks. His body trembles. “I’m not.”
Bridar analyzes him for several moments, somehow managing to look down his nose at his son even from within an image on a screen. “Is what he says true? You sold our spirit, the soul of Feihria, for the sake of a war?”
“Shasa warned us, sir. We should have listened to her,” says the man at Bridar’s side. One thumb tucks at his belt where an axe hangs. Streaks of gray line his curling hair.
“Silence!” Bridar orders once more, and the man shuffles back.
A pause stretches, spanning miles and ages and yet seconds all at once while they wait for Talon’s reply. Don’t say it, don’t say it.
Such a Daring Endeavor Page 9
