Arlo’s dark blue sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, and his boots sit discarded next to the door. His eyes narrow just before he lets off a shot.
It’s beautiful the way his body makes a straight line, drawn tight like a crossbow string, and the tender way his fingers caress the stunner’s hilt. A quick smile melts onto his lips as the bolt finds its target directly on the same burn mark.
I clear my throat.
He whirls around, aiming his stunner at my heart. Even though I don’t think he’ll shoot me, I throw my hands up to show him I’m unarmed. A bolt to the chest right now would squash any dreams of aiding with the rescue mission.
“You really shouldn’t sneak up on a man with a weapon,” Arlo says, lowering his stunner.
“Maybe you should be paying more attention to what’s going on behind you,” I reply, leaning against the doorframe.
He laughs, a full-throated thing, and waves me in. I wonder if he can sense my stress.
“Normally I’d ease into the training,” Arlo says. “The art of long-distance accuracy is a delicate one, but we don’t have time for that.”
I stop a few feet from him. He rolls his eyes, bridging the gap I made, and offers me the stunner he was shooting with. I accept it, my hand dipping with the weight of the metal contraption.
“Not to mention I’ve already used a stunner before.” I move my hand into the position Rayce showed me back in Imperial City.
He chuckles. “Not very well, though. But after today, you should be able to shoot a target if it’s close range.”
He pulls a second stunner from his holster, handling it with the same kind of ease that I would with silk strips. He flips it around so the butt of the handle faces upward and takes a step closer to me.
“This,” he says, pushing down on the top of the hilt with his pointer finger, “is where you load the Zarenite powder.”
The top comes off, revealing a hollow cylinder full of glittering dust.
“As you pull the trigger, the spring here”—he motions to a coil on the bottom of the lid—“moves the powder up. The trigger also creates a spark that ignites the Zarenite, which is what you see coming out of the barrel. That’s about all I understand. Piper knows the rest.”
He fishes inside his shirt and pulls out a vial of Zarenite, exactly like the one Rayce had me swallow when we escaped Imperial City. Just thinking his name conjures up the memory of what he revealed last night and…other things I can’t seem to forget. I turn away to hide my blush. Arlo raises an eyebrow but doesn’t comment, handing me the vial.
“We’re all required to carry extra Zarenite in case we go dark,” Arlo says.
“What does that mean?” I ask, trying to stay rooted in the present.
Arlo holds out his other arm, which is covered in dark green swirling arrows that snake up into the fabric of his shirt.
“If our tattoos become invisible when we’re in contact with Zarenite, that means the mineral inside us has been used up and we need to get more fast,” he says, pulling up his sleeve farther to reveal more of the tattoo. “The bigger the tattoo, the longer we can last without going dark. The extra vial is just a precaution, so we’re almost never caught without it, because if we are, our stunners are basically useless.”
I frown at the Zarenite in my hand. It’s strange how to him it probably represents security, but all I can think of when I look at the green vial is the rocketing pain of a stunner blast.
“Take only a quarter of that vial, since it affects you more strongly than us.”
Arlo ignores my sour face and waits patiently for me to swallow the Zarenite. A wave of heat races down my throat, like I’ve just downed an entire bottle of whiskey.
“It’s hot,” I say, passing him back the vial.
“Then it’s working.” He clears his throat. “While we have a moment, I wanted to thank you for helping save Marin back in Dongsu. And you might not be very good with a stunner, but you scaled that wall quicker than any trained soldier I’ve seen. It was impressive.”
“You don’t have to thank me for helping her,” I say. “I really like your sister.”
He directs me to plant my feet in line with my shoulders, keeping my knees bent. My body falls into line with the commands, used to being told what to do by someone other than myself. The stance, the flow it requires, reminds me of the setup before a dance.
“I always worried something like that would happen,” Arlo says. “To be honest, that’s the only reason it took me so long to join the rebellion.”
“Yeah, Marin told me a little about how reluctant you were at first…and what changed your mind.”
“Use both hands; it’ll help you steady the shot.” He pulls my right arm to meet my left then circles around me so I can’t see his face. “The emperor pretty much ordering my parents to be killed had a lot to do with it. But back when it was just an idea, Rayce and Oren knew they’d need someone to do all of the actual work, since they were both being monitored in the palace. Rayce and I have known each other since we were children, and when his uncle closed the Varshan border, killing my family’s business, he thought I might be interested in fighting with them. He brought me into the palace under the guise of instructing him on long-range weapons, since at the time I spent most of my days entering contests to win money and was well-known for placing decently. Even won a few.”
He shot the sword right out from the Gardener’s hand from at least a hundred feet back.
“I doubt it was just a few,” I say.
He flashes me a wide grin. “I might have been downplaying my accomplishments a bit.” He puts a hand on my shoulder to move it to the correct angle, and I clench my teeth, remembering the feel of Rayce’s palms on my back last night when he held me. It was only to comfort me. We both needed it. But now that I know what he could have been, I can’t get his touch out of my mind.
“At first, I wasn’t interested in what Rayce had to say,” Arlo says, pulling my straying mind back to his story. “If we had been caught before all the measures were in place, I would have put Marin at great risk.”
“I’m sorry,” I say and find that I mean it.
He takes a deep breath behind me. “There isn’t any need to be. Instead of being sorry or mad, I did something about it. It was the only way to cope with the loss of my parents. Besides, I like what we’re doing here, and I believe Rayce will be a great leader when all this fighting is done.”
I turn away from him, lowering my weapon.
“Was Rayce always like he is now?” I ask, keeping my voice light.
“What do you mean?” Arlo asks, then interrupts himself. “No, your weak hand should steady the stunner.” He pushes my hand back up.
“I don’t know, he seems…intense,” I say. “But you knew him growing up. Was he always so focused on leading?”
“No,” Arlo says, laughing. “Before his uncle started coming to his training sessions periodically, I thought they would throw him out of the palace. He was always playing silly pranks on the palace staff and rarely ever took anything seriously. We used to sneak him out of the palace at night and watch all the girls shopping in Imperial City’s market square.”
“The girls must have loved him,” I say, keeping my voice steady. “Both of you, probably.”
Arlo’s face splits into a smile that borders on arrogant.
“A fair few,” he says, then lets a beat of silence draw out between us. “Of course, Rayce never seemed too interested in any of them. I’ve only ever seen him actively try to impress one or two. Especially since he started the rebellion. That’s why I was so surprised by how hard he fought with the council on your behalf to help the others in the Garden.”
Fire rushes to my cheeks, and I hear Arlo chuckle over my racing heart.
“I think you’re about as ready as you can be to shoot,” Arlo says. “Just align the little notch at the end of the barrel and pull the trigger when you’re ready.”
I figured my hands would stop
trembling, but thinking about pulling the trigger makes them shake even worse. I close one eye, fighting to aim the stunner. I can fly through the air with only a piece of silk to catch me; I can stop my fall mere inches from the ground. If I can accomplish those things, a stunner should be easy.
“Remember to breathe,” Arlo says.
My body reacts before my mind, and as I take in a breath, I pull the trigger. The gun kicks back, but because Arlo made me hold my arms out, it doesn’t come near my face. The bolt of Zarenite flies from the tip of my gun, a blazing green blur, and nicks the side of the target.
“Not bad.” Arlo nods his approval. “You wouldn’t have knocked a soldier unconscious, but you’d have slowed them down. You might just be more than a liability yet.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“It was a compliment,” Arlo says. He scratches the back of his head. “I do worry about Rayce, though. Leading this rebellion is definitely taking a toll on him. Intense, you called it…I see that more in him every day.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, steadying my feet to take another shot.
“He has to make a lot of difficult choices. Usually that means choosing between what he wants and how he feels or what’s best for the people he’s leading. But he’ll always choose his people over what he wants for himself. I don’t think I could make the same choices in his shoes.”
My finger hovers over the trigger, and I remember the shape of his lips just inches from mine before the bell saved us from ourselves. Thinking of that moment forces me to relive Rayce’s parting words last night, and I wonder again what he would have done if I’d told him my secret. Would he betray me if he thought it would save his people?
“A lot of times it’s little stuff, like helping the miners dig for Zarenite when he’s tired or staying up all night interpreting the latest information provided by our spies, but sometimes it’s much harder than that.”
“What has he had to do?” I ask, cold dread seeping through my feet from the floor.
“When we originally started this rebellion, there were four of us. We don’t talk about Wèn often, because it’s still pretty painful for all of us. He was another childhood friend of both of ours, but we found out later that he was a spy for the emperor. We lost a battle that killed hundreds of our own because Wèn reported our location beforehand. We didn’t want to believe it, but Rayce had him followed and it was confirmed.”
Sweat slicks my hand, and I rub it on the back of my pant leg. “What happened to him?”
“We don’t know,” Arlo says. “Rayce left him wounded on the battlefield. He either died there or he was surrendered to the emperor’s custody. Death would be kinder.” Arlo shivers, shaking off his words. “But on to better things, like how to defend yourself. Take another shot.”
Forgetting everything he taught me, I pull the trigger, but my mind isn’t here anymore. I can’t get rid of the gnawing sensation crawling up my body, because Arlo more than answered my question. Rayce will do anything for his people, even if that means sentencing someone he’d known his entire life to die. He can never find out about my heritage, then.
I take another shot and feel like I was the one struck with the Zarenite bolt as I remember all of Oren’s little questions and observations.
I have to figure out what Oren knows. If I don’t, I might end up the next hard decision that comes across Rayce’s desk.
Chapter Twenty-One
The second that Arlo decides the wall behind the target has had enough torture for the day, I race out of the training room, waving good-bye to him over my shoulder. Somewhere, crawling around the tunnels, is Oren. After a few minutes of aimlessly wandering, I realize I should have just asked Arlo to show me where Oren stays, but it takes me more than thirty minutes to get back to the training room, and by then, Arlo’s disappeared.
I trace my steps back to my bedroom, thanks to Marin’s map, keeping one eye up to scan the passing faces for Oren, but luck isn’t on my side. The next few hours are a blur of exploring and retracing my steps. Every time I try to ask someone for directions, they scurry away or pointedly look down, like I’ve been shunned. Or they’re afraid of me. I wonder what kind of rumors have circulated.
My growling stomach convinces me to give up the search. Following the twisting tunnel back the way I came, I head toward the dining hall from my room. My feet trace these familiar steps with ease.
As I swing my last right, I nearly run into Oren. Scrolls fall from his clasped arms as he jerks to avoid hitting me, raining paper onto the floor.
“You startled me, Rose!” he says, pushing up his small spectacles.
“Let me help you with those.” I squat down to gather his fallen parchment.
I’d been looking for him all day, but I’m so surprised at nearly colliding with him that I forget why I wanted to find him.
“Are you all right, child?” Oren asks. “I didn’t step on your toes, did I?”
I blink at his question, my mind racing to catch up with the conversation. “No, you didn’t, and I’m fine.” I pick up a few scrolls. “Just a little hungry.”
He frowns at my answer. “I’m afraid the last round of supper ended a good hour ago.” He tilts his head. “Although I do believe there might be a straggler left in the kitchen. We might be able to snag a scrap or two if we ask nicely. Why don’t I walk you?”
Though I really want to pick his brain, I look at the mountain of scrolls we’re picking up and hesitate.
“Are you sure it isn’t a bother?” I ask.
“Of course,” he says.
“I can I help you carry these until we get there.”
He smiles and hands over half his stack. Most of them have a red wax seal of a dragon similar to the one on his pipe and are held shut with green ribbon. Oren turns around to head back the way he was coming from and ducks to clear the nearest hanging lantern filled with Zarenite. Living under all this rock in what must feel like tight spaces would probably annoy me if I were his size. I have no idea how he does it.
“Have you gotten a chance to read through that book I loaned you?” Oren asks, inadvertently pulling me back to my mission at hand.
“I haven’t found the time yet,” I say, which is half true.
“I know you’ve been very busy. I’m sure you will when you find a moment to breathe. I marked a passage in there that I thought might be of particular interest to you.”
I fiddle with one of the ribbons on a bottom scroll, trying to work out how to broach the subject of Varsha with him again without sounding too suspicious.
“Speaking of that book,” I start, keeping my voice light, “I was wondering if you knew any specifics about why Varsha fell.”
He raises an eyebrow at my query. “Well,” he says, taking a deep breath, “that’s a loaded question. I suppose the leading grievance for the rebellion was the previous king’s talks with the Delmarion ambassador.”
“Oh?” I look down at my boots as we walk. “What were they trying to negotiate?”
“A treaty that would have united the kingdoms,” Oren says, “and put an end to this pointless war once and for all.”
My father’s weary voice floats back to me. I remember the worry lines that deepened on his face in the days before Varsha fell. Ever since I let that one moment seep back into my consciousness, his face hovers in the back of my mind, attacking my composure every time I close my eyes.
“Why would the rebels see that as a bad thing? Isn’t an end to the war supposed to be good for the people?”
“It is,” Oren says. “That was the previous king’s mind-set, too. He was a very kind man and he cared deeply for his people. I took many of the lessons I learned from him back with me and used them to teach Rayce. But the problem was, the Varshan rebels didn’t believe the kingdoms should be united through treaty, but rather, by force.”
I scoff. “That’s ridiculous.”
Oren and I reach the empty dining hall. All the chairs are pushed neatly agains
t the five long tables that line the room, and the quiet of the tall space feels overwhelming. As Oren walks in, the wall begins to glow green.
“I believe that was simply false propaganda spread by the usurper in order to spur enough of the people into a civil war,” Oren says. “After all, since he has taken the throne, there have only been four attempts on the wall.”
If what Oren believes is true, then the reason my father is dead is because he tried to unite the kingdoms through love. And even though Rayce had nothing to do with it, I can’t keep myself from believing it was because of our arranged marriage that I lost everything and my father is dead. The pile of scrolls crunches in my arms, and I turn away from Oren in case anything in my face might betray me.
Oren marches us toward the back of the room and into the kitchen. Six ovens line the back wall, and long stone countertops cut through the space. Shiny metal bowls and a variety of utensils sit abandoned in the corners of the cooking stations, and the absence of the usual bubbling pots and people shouting gives the whole place a lonely feeling.
“Ah, here we are,” Oren whispers, motioning to the far corner.
A single familiar figure breaks the flat loneliness of the room, his dark hair pulled back in a very short bun on top of his head. A few strands fall onto his forehead as he bends over the countertop.
Rayce.
He stares intently at a pile of dough, the muscles in his arms flexing every time he kneads it. His large hands and a good portion of his green shirt are peppered in white flour. Though his brow is furrowed in concentration, all the tension I saw on his face the night before has disappeared into a calm serenity.
He hums softly to himself, the slightly out-of-tune melody of an old folk song floating through the stillness of the air.
“I’ve found a straggler hoping for dinner,” Oren says.
Garden of Thorns Page 18
