Eden's Embers

by Helena Maeve

  No one, Alana realized, was going to intervene if she decided to press the point.

  Alana recoiled on wobbly knees. This was what it meant to be a thrall—not scorching nights when she couldn’t get enough of Jackson’s hands on her naked flesh. This. She took another step back and another, until she could muster the courage to turn her back on Maity and flee.

  She was only dimly aware of the hiss of the dagger as it flew past her ear. She didn’t stop to see where it landed or if it had drawn blood.

  * * * *

  It was a stroke of luck that no one was guarding the steel doors as Alana stumbled into the darkened stairwell, her heart thudding violently.

  Keep going, don’t stop now, they’ll catch you. They’ll do with you what they’re going to do with Finn.

  It was dark once the doors had clanged shut behind her, too dark to see, but Alana gripped hold of the banister with both hands and forced herself onward. After that, it was easy. Just one hitch of the knee and she was a step higher than the uppermost floor of the city.

  She counted twelve steps to the first landing, then another twelve going the other way. She stumbled around the fiftieth, out of breath and trembling like a leaf, but she kept going. Somewhere above there was fresh air, sunlight.

  Jackson.

  He would know what to do. He would protect her. She needed to believe that. Her mind refused to allow the possibility that Maity was perfectly within her rights to do what she’d done. Perhaps Finn had called her names, perhaps he’d acted rashly and should be held to account. But to put a knife to his throat and say he was now her property, as though Finn was chattel?

  It could’ve happened to Alana.

  At the corner of the next landing, she hit a wall. A gasp tore out of her lungs, fear that she’d taken a wrong turn, that the way was blocked stealing through her like a bitter squall. But past the momentary shock, she realized that this was where she needed to be. She fumbled for the latch and tugged the door open, straining against the grinding of unoiled hinges.

  What if someone heard? It was too late to worry about that now. Alana dragged the door open wide enough so she could slip through and let it clang shut in her wake.

  Thin blades of sunshine were spilling through the broken windows of the building that concealed the underground city burrowed in its depths. Tentatively, Alana stepped into a pale oblong of light, her vision fogging over and her eyes fighting to adjust to the bright glare.

  She realized suddenly that she had no precise idea of how many days had passed since she’d gone inside. It might have been five days or twice that number. The periodicity of meals that resembled each other and brief interludes in Jackson’s bed weren’t the same as the reassuring, rhythmic succession of night and day.

  She stepped into the street with slow, shuffling steps, her blood-smeared soles scraping through dust and debris. The wind scattered yellowed leaves across her path, stirring the loose tendrils of hair that had escaped her braid.

  The whole world seemed washed out in burnished pastels, so different from the vivid gray-black-white of Haven.

  “Alana?” she heard behind her. She spun around, staggering, only to find Jackson staring at her as though she’d grown a second head.

  She pressed a hand to her chest in a vague attempt to keep her racing heart from bursting through her ribcage. “You scared me.”

  “What are you doing up here? It’s dangerous—”

  “Don’t make me go back down there,” Alana pleaded, blinking back tears. “Jackson, please— Maity’s lost her mind. She attacked Finn…” That wasn’t quite the way it had happened, but the fact remained that she had witnessed Maity put a dagger to Finn’s throat and threaten to take his life. Between the two of them, she was easily the bigger threat.

  Jackson frowned. “Is he still alive?”

  “Y-yes. I think so.”

  For a moment, she worried that Jackson might say that was good enough and tell her to keep her nose out of other people’s business. It was the sort of thing she would’ve expected to hear from Krall and his fellow councilmen back in New Eden. But Jackson wasn’t the kind of man who buried his head in the sand.

  “Then we still have time,” he said and beckoned her closer. “Come, it’s all right.”

  Alana didn’t budge. “You believe me?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  Because I’m just a thrall. She’d been on the verge of making her peace with her new life when Maity had said she would claim Finn from under Leona as though what he wanted didn’t matter one bit. She couldn’t shake the niggling feeling that Jackson already knew.

  “Is this the way it’s done?” she asked, digging her heels into the asphalt. “Is this normal for you?”

  “Alana—”

  “Tell me!” she shouted, swiping angrily at the tears leaking out of her eyes. She had never despised her easily frayed nerves more.

  If he put his mind to it, Jackson could drag her back into the shadows of the city and bind her so that she never escaped again. He had the strength of limb. Clearly no one would bat an eyelid if he forbade her to see the sun again.

  After all, no one had jumped to Finn’s defense, either.

  “Yes”—Jackson sighed—“and I’ve been struggling to find a way out for a long time.” He held out a hand. “There’s something you should see. Please… Trust me.”

  “Why?” Because you’re my master? Strange how there could be affection and belonging in the term one moment and hostility the next.

  Jackson smiled with half a mouth, nothing mirthful in the expression twisting at the corners of his lips. “Because I haven’t lied to you yet.”

  It shouldn’t have surprised her to find that he was in earnest. But it did.

  Alana placed her hand in his.

  * * * *

  Ophelyn shifted his crossbow from his shoulder to both hands when he saw them approach. “What’s going on?”

  “We have another one,” Jackson said gruffly.

  It was unsettling to see such a big man deflate, shoulders slumping and crossbow grazing the ground. “Who?”

  “Maity. Leona needs to hear this—”

  “I heard,” Leona’s voice echoed from behind a crumbling plaster wall. “Pity, though. I had good coin on Siggy losing her marbles next.”

  “She’s threatening to claim Finn,” Jackson said. His palm was a reassuring anchor at the small of Alana’s back, keeping her upright as much as guiding her through the heaps of rubble piled up around them.

  They were maybe two hundred yards from the entrance into Haven, hidden from view by the tall parapet of a façade topped with a white on green star. Within, the wallpaper had peeled off like ribbon and ivy was creeping around the stems of long shattered wall-mounted light fixtures.

  Leona appeared in the gap of what might have been a doorway, back in the world that was. “What did you say?” A smudge of oil painted her cheek and she was clutching a metal wrench in one fist. She looked murderous.

  “Alana saw them brawling. Seems Maity wants to stake a claim,” Jackson said, briefly sketching out the details of Alana’s report.

  “Fuck me,” Leona growled as she kicked at the scrapheap of debris clumped around them. Bits of granite flew into the air, trickling like raindrops to the ground. “I’m going to eat her heart—”

  Ophelyn tried to block her passage and Leona ducked, elbowing him in the chest. He gasped, doubling over as Leona’s wrench clattered to the ground.

  It was like a replay of the past minutes, but unlike Maity and Finn, Leona stopped short after that one knee-jerk clout.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Fuck, I’m sorry. You all right?”

  “I never learn,” Ophelyn groaned, slowly righting himself. A pained grimace twisted at his features. “So what’s the plan? We go in with guns blazing and take your boy back?”

  Leona pressed her lips into a thin line, but said nothing.

  It was Jackson who spoke, shaking his head. “We try that a
nd Finn’s as good as dead. As are we. We have to move up the deadline.”

  “To when?” Ophelyn asked, his face falling.

  “Tonight. Tomorrow.” Jackson rolled his shoulders into a shrug. “As soon as we can.”

  “What deadline?” Alana interjected, feeling as though she was missing some vital piece of information. “What’s going on?”

  Jackson propped both hands against his hips, shifting his weight. He didn’t meet Alana’s gaze. “I have to tell her.”

  “Finn’s not here,” said Ophelyn.

  “We have quorum. I say spill,” was Leona’s answer. “She needs to know what’s about to happen.”

  “We don’t know that anything will—”

  “We’re planning to break away from Haven,” Jackson said, cutting Ophelyn short. “We’ve been at it for a while, but drifters are hard to shake. We’ve seen people try to leave before only to get pulled back in—or worse.”

  Alana frowned. She was suddenly glad for the wall behind her, sandy though it was. She needed the support. “You’re leaving?”

  Leona clucked her tongue, impatient. “Pay attention, sweetheart. He said we, as in all of us… Unless you’re keen to stay behind and become Maity’s bitch.”

  “I think that position has already been filled,” Alana shot back, too quick for better judgment to play any part in the icy comeback.

  “”That’s enough, both of you. We’re getting Finn out and we’re leaving,” Jackson decreed.

  “And I suppose Gideon will leave us be out of the goodness of his heart,” said Ophelyn. His tone of voice suggested they’d been through this before. It wasn’t a new plan. Jackson had been hoarding this one for a while.

  Alana wondered if he’d known he was planning to break with his people when he took her from New Eden. Suddenly his reticence along the way, his reluctance to play the role he was meant to inhabit made perfect sense.

  “You could take it out of his hands,” Alana mused aloud.

  Ophelyn arched his brows, waving a hand. “Sounds great. How?”

  “You’re raiders,” she recalled. “How do you normally keep people from giving chase?” How had they done it in New Eden? The town had known seventy years of prosperity behind its tall, impenetrable gates. Jackson penetrated under the guise of a tradesman and deluge followed. Alana met his gaze, unflinching, and said, “You burn down their homes.”

  Jackson opened his mouth to answer, then seemed to think better of it. He slanted a glance at Leona, who was herself looking at Ophelyn. None of them spoke.

  Alana waited them out, too drained to make a case for destruction.

  “She may have a point,” Ophelyn said at length.

  Leona didn’t disagree, but there was something viperous in her gaze as she sized Alana up. “You sure you’re not suggesting it just because you’re itching for payback?”

  “Does it matter?” Alana retorted. “You’re the ones who perfected the method. You made it your way of life… If it works for settlers, why wouldn’t it work for Haven?”

  “Because drifters don’t need a home,” Jackson answered, scraping his boot sole against the ground. “And we hold grudges for a very long time. We let even one of them live and they’ll chase us down till the end of our days.”

  Sighing, Leona rolled her shoulders and slid her machete free of its scabbard. “Then we cover our traces,” she said, brushing past Jackson on her way out of the ruins.

  Alana followed her with her gaze, confused until she saw the walker ambling blearily toward them. It had been a man once, but by now its face had been eaten away by hunger and disease, picked at by crows and worms and the sun’s blistering rays.

  As Alana looked on, instinctively flattening her back to the wall, Leona severed its grasping hands and with a graceful twist decapitated the creature where it stood. A spurt of black blood streaked the ground.

  Leona grimaced at the body as it splatted down at her feet in a sad little heap. “Think I know just how to do it…”

  “You’ll—we’ll still need a way to disappear quickly,” Alana said, swallowing past the bile that had risen in the back of her throat.

  “Look behind you,” Ophelyn suggested mildly.

  Alana didn’t think he would’ve been so cavalier if there were walkers concealed in the ruins of the old dwelling, so she looked. Her jaw all but hit the concrete.

  “Like I said,” Jackson murmured, coming up to lay a hand on her shoulder, “we’ve been working to make this happen for a long time.” He didn’t have to say it, but with Finn’s life in the balance, they could wait no longer.

  Alana rounded on him slowly. “You said another one.”

  “What?”

  “You said ‘we have another one’. I thought you meant me, but that’s obviously not right. Another what?”

  She may have been a thrall in Haven, but she had been a healer in New Eden and she knew how to read a man when he was leaving out the salient details. She was done following blindly along, hoping the road would lead her true.

  Jackson pursed his lips but to his credit he didn’t look away. “Another one like my brother. There’s something in the water… It’s literally making people go crazy.”

  “Yeah,” Leona drawled, unabashedly listening in. “And Gideon calls the unfortunate fools who lose their minds touched by the gods.”

  “How do you know they aren’t?” Alana asked, mostly for the sake of argument. Faith had never killed anyone in New Eden, though the lack of it could be lethal if the wrong people found out.

  It was strange enough for Alana to find herself arguing the contrary, as though her identity was slowly being whittled away to be replaced by something darker, but she had to ask. The era of blind faith was fast drawing to an end.

  “Gods can’t be killed by human hand,” Jackson said, squinting into the middle distance. “And yet my brother was.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Alana negotiated the steps with the care of someone acutely aware of their poor coordination. She still she stumbled at the last one, nearly barreling head first into the nearest wall. She wondered if that was a sign of things to come, the thought dissolving when the bright glow of Ophelyn’s light focused on the figure by the door.

  “Easy,” Siggy chuckled, her voice echoing loudly in the vast and gloomy well. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  “You scared me,” Alana said. For a second there, she had mistaken Siggy for a walker.

  The other woman shrugged. “We’re not all meant for the spotlight. Mind getting that thing out of my eyes? Thanks,” Siggy added when Alana complied. “What were you doing topside?”

  So her absence had been noted. “I wanted to see my master,” Alana retorted archly. “Is that not allowed?”

  Siggy shrugged, her black-clad body hard to distinguish from the shadows that roved in the depths of the well. “I’m not in the business of giving orders to other people’s thralls. As long as you’re not interfering with reparations on the wind traps, where you and Idaho fuck is none of my concern.”

  Alana felt a spark of annoyance kindle in her breast and swiftly snuffed it out. She reminded herself that it was better if Siggy thought she was so easy for Jackson that she’d go seek him out for a quick afternoon lay, rather than suspect what they were truly up to.

  She’d got away with it yesterday, when the rumor of Maity’s deeds was still too fresh for anyone to pay attention to Alana’s comings and goings. It was no surprise that her luck had dried up in the meantime. From what Jackson had said, Haven was quick to adjust to change. Most drifters were wise to keep their heads down, to ignore the spill of trouble into their own lives.

  “I told him about Finn,” Alana said, which at least had the benefit of being true.

  Siggy canted her head with a knowing smirk. “Ah, and he rushed down to save that poor idiot from his fate?”

  “Depending on how long you’ve been hiding in the dark, you know full well that’s not the case.” Alana didn’t
have to struggle very hard to find an acerbic retort to match Siggy’s forked tongue. She knew she would’ve been better served to walk away, but for two days now, she had thought of nothing but Finn.

  Jackson was sure that Maity wouldn’t kill him. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t do other things to hurt him. Alana remembered her thirst for violence, the sudden spark of rage kindling in her veins. That knife throw had been no accident.

  “Neither did Leona,” Siggy noted. “That I didn’t expect.”

  The querying note in Siggy’s voice was hard to miss. Alana greeted it with a shrug of shoulders. “I’m not surprised. He’s just a thrall, right? That’s how you people think.” She started forward. “Are you going to let me pass?”

  Siggy’s scorn came from different place from Leona’s. Alana could see it in the way Siggy smirked and shifted slowly out of the way. She was the presumptive successor to the leadership of Haven. She was her father’s heir and she possessed his brand of affable if cruel derision. “I feel like I should be asking you for some kind of password,” she tittered as Alana stepped through into the city. “I’d stay away from Mai, if I were you.”

  “Only if you were me?” Alana shot back, feigning surprise. “And here I thought watching from afar was your specialty.”

  She walked away quickly, hoping to avoid a back and forth that could degenerate like Finn’s innocent banter. She didn’t think Siggy was the type to resort to fists and daggers—she seemed too controlled, too poised for that—but Jackson’s orders were for Alana to keep her head down.

  Leona had also tasked Alana with finding out where Finn was being held, but to do so without attracting attention to herself was easier said than done.

  The hallways were largely empty while the work shifts were ongoing, so Alana thought better of venturing into corners of the city where she wasn’t supposed to go, in case someone spotted her. Instead, she crept down to her shift in the laundry room, where she had been scheduled to work again after her last unmitigated success.

  She looked around for Maity before she entered, but there was no sign of the other woman’s inky-black hair anywhere. Alana couldn’t claim that she missed her, but she would’ve preferred to know Maity was out and working for the betterment of Haven instead of tormenting Finn in some dark, dreary corner.