Deception

by C. J. Redwine

  She shakes her head. “No, you knew exactly what to do. How to stand up for yourself and win. It was terrifying and amazing.”

  “Terrifying.”

  “And amazing. Who knew a girl could kill a grown man?”

  In the back of my mind, Melkin’s dark eyes beg me to save him as his blood flows hot and sticky over my hands. I shake my head and walk faster. Sylph matches my pace.

  After a moment, she says, “I felt foolish, Rachel. All those years of friendship, and I had no idea what you were capable of. You could’ve told me.”

  “You would’ve told your mother.” I squeeze her closer to me to take away the sting of remembering her mother’s death. “Not on purpose, but you would’ve told her.”

  Her voice catches on a rasp of grief. “Maybe. She could always get the truth out of me.”

  I think of the way we used to walk behind her father in the market, whispering our secrets. Whispering her secrets. Most of mine were too dangerous to share. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  For still having secrets. For being unable to open up and let her in anymore. For pretending to feel the things I know I should be feeling because inside of me there’s nothing but darkness and the faint voices of those whose blood is on my hands.

  “I’m sorry about your family,” I say.

  She leans her cheek against my shoulder as we step around a woman whose small child has stopped to chase a shower of flower petals teased from the branches by the late afternoon breeze. “And I’m sorry about your family, too. But I have Smithson, and you have Logan. We have more than most.”

  The bouncing, irrepressible Sylph of my childhood is gone. In her place, forged out of fire and loss, is a woman-girl with steady eyes and clear vision. Talking to her is like coming home and finding the furniture in every room rearranged. The same pieces are there, the same sense of comfort, but nothing is exactly where you’d expect.

  Ahead of us, a woman struggles up the hill alone, her gait unsteady and her steps slow. Sylph and I lean against each other the way we used to as children when we’d walk through Lower Market, plotting how to get extra sticky buns from Oliver or how to get Corbin Smythe, the cutest boy our age, to notice us.

  More apple blossoms whirl through the air as we approach the woman who can barely manage the hill. I’m about to remind Sylph of the time we bribed Corbin to eat lunch with us by promising to give him an entire loaf of raisin bread, but the words shrivel in my mouth as we flank the woman, and I look in her face.

  It’s Melkin’s wife, Eloise, waddling slowly up the hill, her hands cupped beneath her swollen belly as if to keep the baby safe inside of her for just a little longer. Her thin brown hair falls down her shoulders in limp strands, and her eyes are puffy with exhaustion or tears. Probably both.

  “Let us help you,” Sylph says, and gently wraps her arm around Eloise’s waist.

  “Thank you.” Eloise’s voice is a timid, caged thing hovering uncertainly in the air before drifting away. Everything about her seems washed-out and weary. Everything but her eyes.

  Her eyes are full of misery and knowing. I look away, my cheeks burning as if she’d slapped me.

  “Rachel, put your arm around her and help me,” Sylph says.

  I can’t touch her with the hands that ripped her husband away from her. I can’t.

  She looks at me with her tired eyes as if waiting for me to tell her something she already knows, but I can’t speak.

  “It’s okay,” Eloise says in her pale, whispery voice. “I know you tried to save him.”

  Who told her that lie? I shake my head and try to find the words to contradict her, but my lips stay closed, protecting my secrets even as they rise up to choke me with bloody fingers.

  “Rachel?” Sylph sounds baffled. Maybe worried. I can’t look at her to see which is true. I can’t look at either of them.

  Melkin’s dark eyes burning with fury, his knife pointed at the ground. The rage that blistered through me when I knew he wanted to take the device and leave me with nothing—no way to destroy the Commander and make my father’s sacrifice count. The flash of silver as I attacked him. A confusion of blows. And Melkin dropping toward me, his face a murderous mask, his sword arm hidden.

  My knife. His chest. Blood covering me as I sat horrified. As I let him believe I was Eloise. As I pretended he’d saved her, when neither of us had saved anyone.

  “Rachel!” Sylph’s voice cuts through the memory, and something tugs on my arm.

  I look down to see Eloise’s small white hand pressing against my arm. My stomach surges, and I snatch my arm away before the bile reaches my throat.

  “Are you okay?” Sylph asks, but I’m already moving—striding past citizens, crushing apple blossom petals beneath my boots, and pretending I can leave the ghost of Melkin behind as easily as I can leave his wife.

  Chapter Nine

  LOGAN

  I spend the evening monitoring the machine’s progress, helping maneuver the wagons down the slick basement steps, which are barely wide enough to accommodate them, and pressuring Jeremiah to hurry up and finish drawing a map of the northern territory.

  I also spend it straining to hear any change in the constant rhythm of the battering ram. Any indication that our narrow window of opportunity is gone.

  Through it all, I answer innumerable questions—How will we get the animals through the tunnel? Blindfold them and lead them. Are you really going to let girls carry weapons and help guard the camp? Absolutely. Shouldn’t we leave now? Too dangerous. What if the tunnel collapses? What if the Commander finds us? What if the Cursed One attacks?

  What if?

  I can’t assure them enough. I can’t explain my plans, argue my points, or reason with panic-stricken people. Not if I also want to make sure the camp is locked down, the wagons are ready, the map is completed, and the tunnel reaches the surface in the right place. My patience feels like a stripped wire ready to snap.

  When I find myself tempted to pull a page out of the Commander’s rule book and tell a woman that if she doesn’t like my methods she can stay behind in the dungeon, I ask Drake to keep everyone but the tunnel crew away from me, and I hide in the tunnel’s depths, calculating distances, replacing batteries, and reconfiguring trajectories while the rest of the camp goes to sleep.

  The battering ram is still pounding at the gate in regular intervals when I make my way up the basement stairs again. The majority of our people have settled down on bedrolls in the main banquet hall. Most of my inner circle are already sleeping, taking the opportunity to get some rest now in case they’re called upon to handle a crisis later. Even Rachel is sleeping, her bedroll snugged up beside Sylph’s. Their hands are clasped tightly, and I hope it’s enough to keep Rachel’s nightmares away.

  Quinn has a pair of guards stationed by the compound’s front door and another pair in the watchtower that rises above the kitchen like a castle’s turret. All of them have one duty: to listen for the battering ram to fall silent.

  I pace through the compound checking locks, supplies, wagons, and animals. Making sure the last of the Commander’s explosives are mounted in the right places throughout the basement. Thinking through every possible scenario and doing my best to come up with a solution for each.

  The pile of weapons resting against the basement wall catches my eye. Every piece is lined up and ready for one of the survivors to grab it on the way into the tunnel tomorrow. Long swords for the men. Short swords, daggers, and knives for everyone else. Even a few walking sticks for those who need the help. Rachel is proof that a walking stick in the right hands can be a formidable weapon.

  At the end of the row, a walking stick in black ebony nearly blends into the dark wall behind it.

  Melkin’s staff.

  The one he was given when he was on a mission to another city-state.

  The one that can call the Cursed One.

  I’m willing to bet Melkin was in Rowansmark when he received his gift. Did
he know what he had? Or was James Rowan just hoping to get lucky and have Melkin accidentally call the beast to destroy Baalboden?

  The metal is smooth and cold beneath my fingers. I should leave the staff. Shove it into a shadowy corner of the basement where it will be overlooked and then bury it when I bring down the ceiling.

  But what if in burying it, I activate the sonic pulse that calls the Cursed One? My people would be in the tunnel. Even with the completed power booster attached to the tech I carry, I can’t risk it. Besides, if the staff is capable of calling the monster, maybe it’s capable of other things as well. You never know when something like that could come in handy.

  Laying the staff in the back of the supply wagon, behind my extra jars of glycerin and acid and my bags of tech supplies and scrap parts, I return to the tunnel and consider the one scenario I don’t have a solution for.

  Every guard in Baalboden carried a tracking device and an Identidisc capable of scanning the unique ridges of our wristmarks and listing which citizens were in a seventy-yard radius. I’d be a fool not to consider that the Commander may have already used an Identidisc to scan our wristmarks to see who survived the fires and stayed behind with me. Once he has a list of our wristmark signals, he can use a tracking device to find us unless we’re out of range.

  We’d have to be at least five hundred yards away to be out of range. We don’t have time to tunnel that far. I just have to hope the Commander doesn’t realize we’ve left until it’s too late to track us down.

  I nod a silent greeting to the nighttime tunnel crew again and set about toggling the levers that control the machine’s trajectory. A few minutes later, the machine is chewing through the dirt at a three percent incline, and I’m back to pacing the tunnel while I worry over every other worst case scenario that presents itself to me.

  What if the machine breaks before it reaches the surface?

  What if the device doesn’t keep the Cursed One at bay when one hundred fifty-four pairs of boots are stomping through its domain?

  What if the Commander is already tracking us?

  What if?

  “Thought I might find you here,” a voice says behind me, and I nearly drop the torch I’m holding as I spin around to find Thom standing in the tunnel holding a torch of his own. The firelight flickers along the craggy planes of his face, and he smiles a little as I shake my head.

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that. You nearly gave me heart failure.”

  “Didn’t sneak up on purpose. You weren’t paying attention.” He shifts his torch to his other hand. “You need sleep, Logan.”

  “I can’t.”

  “If you want to lead everyone out of this place tomorrow, you don’t have a choice.” He nods toward the far end of the tunnel, where the faint hum of the machine drones steadily. “I’ll keep watch here for you.”

  “You need sleep, too.” And besides, I’m not awake because I think the tunnel crew needs supervision. I’m awake because there might be a scenario that I’ve missed. I can’t afford to stop thinking through the potential problems and coming up with viable solutions.

  “The group can function well enough without me for a few hours tomorrow if I have to nap in a wagon, Logan. It’s you they need.”

  The air in the tunnel feels close and warm. I gulp it down as my throat tightens and look away. For most of my life, I wondered what it would feel like to be respected. Looked up to. Needed.

  I thought it would be fulfilling, but instead it’s exhausting. The expectations and hope placed on me weigh more than I think I can bear, and every single bit of the trust that’s been thrust my way feels fragile in my clumsy hands.

  What if I fail them?

  Thom’s hand wraps around my shoulder and squeezes gently. “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  He sighs and settles himself next to me with his back against the dirt wall. His mop of brown hair falls into his eyes, but he doesn’t seem to care. “That’s young. Maybe too young for everything we’ve asked of you.”

  “Drake could do it better.” I lean next to him and watch the way the torchlight dances in the gloom. “He’s older, more experienced—he’d already started leading your group against the Commander. I just don’t understand why . . .”

  “Why we picked you?”

  I nod.

  “Drake gathered a group of like-minded people together to talk grand ideas. What if things were different? What if we could change our society?” His hand tightens against my shoulder and then slips away. “But really, what we were doing was waiting for the Commander to die. Planning for change that we could implement when our enemy was already gone.”

  I remain silent, and Thom takes a moment, as if he wants to choose his words with care. “But you, Logan, you didn’t wait. You didn’t sit in dark corners making big plans that you knew you couldn’t put into motion because it would mean committing treason. You stood up to him. You saw an injustice, and you stood up to him. None of us had ever found the courage to do that.”

  “I just did what anyone . . . I couldn’t—he was hurting Rachel.”

  Thom’s voice is filled with quiet grief. “And before that, it was Drake’s wife. Derreck’s son. My sister. The list is endless. But we just talked. Grieved and talked. Got angry and talked some more. We were full of someday plans, because we aren’t leaders.”

  “I think you’re selling yourself short.”

  “I’d say that honor goes to you alone.”

  We fall silent, listening to the rumble of the machine and the quiet murmurs of the tunnel crew as they brace the walls and the ceiling.

  “You aren’t afraid when it counts,” he says.

  My laugh is tinged with bitterness. “I’m always afraid.”

  “Of what? Dying? Being tortured? The Cursed One?”

  “Failing.”

  There’s a smile in his voice. “And that’s what makes you the right leader for us. You’re driven to do the right thing, no matter what it costs you. And you’re smart enough to make it happen. Never in my life seen anyone with more ideas and plans than you.”

  I let his words settle in my head while our torches hiss and pop. The burden of responsibility is still enormous, but somehow it feels like Thom is now shouldering a small piece of it for me. I push away from the wall and look at him. His brown eyes hold mine steadily, and he waits quietly for my next words.

  “I think this is the longest conversation you and I have ever had,” I say.

  He looks pained. “I’d appreciate it if next time you didn’t make me do most of the talking. Never really cared for it.”

  I grin. “I respect a man who lets his actions speak louder than his words.”

  “And I respect you. Never forget it. Now go get some sleep. I’ll watch over the tunnel until daybreak.”

  I respect you. His words ring in my ears as I follow his advice and head toward the main banquet hall and my bedroll.

  I was wrong. Being needed, trusted, and respected by others isn’t nearly as exhausting as the fear that those who now look to me for leadership do so because they’ve built me up to be more than I can possibly be. Thom accepts my fears and my shortcomings and still wants me as his leader for reasons that make sense to me. I underestimated him, and as I lie down with nothing but a thin blanket between me and the cold marble floor of the banquet hall, I have to wonder if it’s possible that I’ve underestimated the rest of my people as well.

  I hope to keep them safe long enough to find out.

  Chapter Ten

  RACHEL

  I wake in the predawn gray with the rest of the camp, pack up my bedroll, and take my breakfast ration—a chunk of yesterday’s bread—to the wide steps leading to the compound’s entrance while Logan supervises the final preparations for our journey. The air is heavy with the promise of rain, and faint beams of sunlight waver uncertainly between thick ribbons of gray cloud.

  Boom. Boom.

  The pair of second-shift guards who are standi
ng at the door listening to the battering ram’s steady assault against the gate gaze longingly at my bread, and I take pity on them.

  “Go get a breakfast ration. I’ll listen for any trouble.” The words are barely out of my mouth when they hurry toward the banquet hall. Before I turn back around to face the city, Jeremiah shuffles down the hall, his purple bow tied smartly around the collar of his tunic. He nods to me and then disappears into the room he’s been using to draw Logan’s map.

  Boom.

  A long scraping noise fills the air. Like a giant metal fingernail sliding across the cobblestones.

  The debris is shifting. There’s no way to tell how much longer it will take for the army to create a hole big enough to use, but we’re leaving soon. Hopefully it won’t matter.

  Before I turn to tell Logan about the battering ram’s progress, I take one more look at Baalboden. My eyes seek out the street where I was raised, just a little north of Lower Market. Splintered beams and solitary brick chimneys stretch toward the sky, but there’s nothing else. No rooftops. No homes. Nothing but ashes and memories.

  Boom. Scrape. Slide.

  I wait for the loss of my father’s laughter to hurt me. For the memory of Oliver’s sticky buns and fairy tales to cut me to pieces, but I’m hollowed out inside.

  Boom.

  Turning away, I decide it’s better this way. Easier. I can walk away from this if I don’t let myself grieve for what I’m leaving behind.

  The sense that something is wrong comes quietly. A tiny finger of fear skating over my skin. A whisper that I’ve missed something important. I stop chewing, strain to see deep into the fog-drenched ruins, and listen.

  Silence.

  The battering ram has fallen quiet.

  I see flashes of red moving quickly through the foggy streets and swear.

  The army is coming.

  Racing up the steps, I slam the front door behind me. Pushing the metal bars into place, I lock the door and hope Carrington wastes plenty of time hunting through the rest of the city before they come so far north.