Deception

by C. J. Redwine

  Rachel is still unconscious. Quinn lapses in and out of unconsciousness as well, as do two of the others. One boy’s leg is burned so badly, I’m sure it will have to be amputated. Another woman might lose her hand.

  None of those wounds are treatable while we’re camped out in the Wasteland. I need to get my people inside the safety of Lankenshire and into their medical building as fast as possible. Which means I can’t tell Lankenshire the entire truth.

  Not yet.

  If they knew we might harbor a killer in our midst, we have both the army of Carrington and a contingent of Baalboden guards, led by the Commander, on our trail, and we’ve incurred the wrath of Rowansmark, we’d be turned away before I ever had the chance to make my case for an alliance.

  If we’re turned away, people will die.

  Rachel might die, and I can’t stand to imagine my life without her in it.

  So as we approach the gates, I instruct Drake to let me do the talking and come up with a story that is completely true . . . without telling the whole truth. Guilt snaps at me, but I shove it aside. I have promises to keep to the survivors of Baalboden. I’ve made no promises to Lankenshire yet.

  Just inside the entrance, a man wearing gold bars on the front left pocket of his uniform steps forward. “What business do you have with Lankenshire?” he asks as he stares at our group like he’s never seen a crowd of smoke-scorched weary souls standing outside his gate. His voice is cautious but friendly enough.

  “We’re from Baalboden, and we were in a fire last night. I have several seriously injured people, some of our elderly are suffering from smoke inhalation, and I have a pregnant woman due to give birth any day. We’d like to respectfully request lodging and medical attention. I can offer payment.”

  Once I have the right supplies to replicate the device, that is. Until then the three elected leaders who govern Lankenshire—known as the triumvirate—will have to take me at my word.

  “What are folks from Baalboden doing so far north?” He peers past me as if searching for someone. “Where’s your leader?”

  I clear my throat, and the man’s gaze latches onto me again. “We’re all that’s left of Baalboden. The Cursed One destroyed it almost six weeks ago. I’d planned to negotiate a possible asylum for my people here, but last night’s fire changed those plans temporarily.”

  “Baalboden’s gone?” His eyes widen, and he glances over his shoulder as if the Cursed One might suddenly appear and light his city on fire, too.

  “Please,” I say as I step closer to the gate. “Some of my people will die if they don’t get medical attention.”

  He tugs at the hem of his jacket. “I can’t offer you long-term asylum. That has to come from the triumvirate. But I should be able to offer your people a brief stay in the hospital while our leaders set aside a time to meet with you and hear your case. Let me check with my commanding officer.”

  He hurries into the city, leaving the two soldiers who were with him to stand and stare at us while we wait. It isn’t long before he’s back, along with several other men in green uniforms and six people, both women and men, dressed all in white.

  “I brought doctors,” the gate guard says. “And my commanding officer.” He snatches a thick gold key from a chain around his neck and unlocks the gate. “You’re welcome to stay in the hospital while your people recover. The triumvirate is being told of your presence and will request a meeting with you as soon as you are not as concerned with the immediate care and treatment of your people.”

  “We’ll take your animals and wagons, if you like,” one of the other uniformed men says. “We can spread them out between several local farmers and care for them until you need them again.”

  “Thank you,” I say. My voice can’t encompass the relief that fills me. I set out to find a safe asylum for my people, and I’ve done it. Now I just need to catch a killer, outwit the Commander, and warn the other city-states about Rowansmark’s tech.

  The doctors surround the medical wagon, and in seconds, it’s whisked off toward the hospital. The rest of us follow slowly on foot, led by Coleman Pritchard, the man in charge of Lankenshire’s security.

  Coleman points out the local sights as we walk. The greenhouse beside the city’s best pub. The museum that is solely dedicated to restoring and displaying artifacts from the previous civilization. The central irrigation system that makes it possible to raise crops, even if the rainfall won’t cooperate.

  I try to act interested and respond in all the right places, but I keep scanning the faces that peek out of buildings as we walk the glittering stone road that winds through Lankenshire’s business district like a loose spiral.

  I keep looking for the tracker.

  “Did anyone else enter Lankenshire today?” I ask when Coleman takes a break from explaining the newly installed gas streetlamps and switches to discussing the sizable mercantile that sells the best pickled okra in all of the nine city-states.

  “Not yet,” Coleman says as the road curves gently to the right. “Are you expecting someone else? Do you have missing people?”

  “No. I just wondered how often people visit.”

  Coleman points to the hospital, a solid four-story structure that gleams in the same pale glittery stone as the roads beneath us. “Here we are! Elim is our head nurse. She’ll make arrangements to allow your uninjured to lodge here as well while you wait for everyone to heal. I’m sure your people will appreciate the warm beds and the opportunity to shower.”

  He looks over his shoulder at my people, and I follow his gaze. Dirty, soot-stained faces and torn clothing greet my perusal.

  “Perhaps I can ask our Charity Committee if we have any spare clothing as well,” Coleman says.

  “That might be a good idea,” I say.

  “There’s Elim now. I’ll leave you in her hands, and see about setting up a meeting with the triumvirate. And about getting you some clothes.”

  Before I can thank him again, he’s gone, and Elim, a slim, capable-looking woman with the same beautiful olive skin and almond-shaped eyes as Adam, walks toward us. I’m about to greet her when a flash of movement behind her catches my eye.

  I freeze, and my pulse races. I could’ve sworn I just saw a man in the hospital lobby wearing the brown-and-green uniform of a Rowansmark tracker. Craning my head so I can see around Elim, I sweep the lobby, a spacious room done in calming green and white, but can’t see anything out of place.

  “Everything okay?” Elim asks me.

  I look at the lobby again, but all I see are doctors, our seriously wounded, and a nurse or two. I haven’t slept since the night before last, and I’m running on nothing but worry and adrenaline. I can’t trust my judgment, but I’m also not willing to take any chances.

  “I’d like all of my people to be on the same floor, if possible. I understand that means you’ll need to put several people per room, but we prefer it that way.” I smile at her and hope she doesn’t ask me why I don’t want my people spread all over the building.

  I really don’t want to have to explain that I need guards stationed, and that one of the citizens I’m guarding is a traitor who deserves to die. Or that I’m worried a tracker might attack us if we’re separated.

  “Of course,” Elim says. Her smile is warm. “Please come inside, and I’ll make arrangements. Let me just check with the doctors to see which floor they prefer to have the most critical patients on.”

  We follow her into the hospital, which smells of soap and illness, and I take the opportunity to wander through the lobby, checking every chair and every corner, and looking down every hall.

  I don’t see a tracker, but that doesn’t mean we’re safe. Lankenshire was the only possible destination in the area. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that’s where we were heading. The tracker could’ve come inside the city’s wall last night after setting the fires that killed some of my people.

  I’m going to take all the necessary precautions to protect my people as if an
attack is imminent. And hope that once the triumvirate hears my case against the Commander and Rowansmark, and sees what I have to offer in exchange for an alliance, they’ll help protect my people, too.

  Until then I’m going to plant myself next to Rachel’s bedside and work day and night on the tech I need to bring down our enemies.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  RACHEL

  Awareness creeps through me as if a thick fog is slowly lifting from my thoughts. I’m lying on my back, and something soft cushions me. I feel . . . disconnected. Like my brain and my body aren’t talking to each other yet.

  “Almost three days,” a voice says somewhere above me.

  Someone else replies, but I don’t catch the words. My head is heavy with sleep and something else. Something that dulls my thoughts and makes it impossible to lift my eyelids.

  I feel like I’m floating underwater beneath my skin.

  “. . . not normal, is it?” the same voice asks. It sounds familiar, but holding on to the voice long enough to put a name to it takes more effort than I can give.

  My thoughts spin away from me, but it’s not unpleasant. I don’t have to think or remember or make any decisions. I just have to lie here.

  I should float underwater more often.

  “. . . both exposed to the smoke for longer than anyone else,” a different voice says. This voice is higher than the other. Calmer. A woman.

  I don’t think I know her.

  The woman says, “They breathed in a great deal of smoke, Logan, but look. Quinn woke up several times today and his breathing has improved. He’ll be walking around by tomorrow.”

  “What about Rachel?” Logan asks.

  Logan. My thoughts spin faster until pieces of memory fly through my head in rapid disorder.

  A little girl by a white stone. Familiar eyes. Thick billows of noxious smoke rushing down my throat and burning my lungs.

  Burning.

  White-gold flames. Explosions. Pain.

  As soon as I think the word, I realize a dull throbbing reverberates through my right arm, from my shoulder to my fingertips. Trying to move my arm gives the pain a set of vicious teeth.

  I moan and my eyes flutter open. The room I’m in tilts and wobbles, and I close my eyes again before the motion makes me sick to my stomach.

  “Rachel?” Logan asks, and calloused fingers stroke my cheek.

  I try opening my mouth to answer, but my lips feel sewn shut.

  “Here,” the woman says, “give her some water.”

  The woman is a stranger. But the hand belongs to Logan. The room—I have no idea how I came to be inside a room instead of a wagon, but my mushy brain refuses to tackle this conundrum.

  Something cold presses against my lips, and water trickles over them and into my mouth. It feels like my throat is the size of a small canyon when I first swallow, but the second and third swallows are easier. After five swallows, the cup is removed from my mouth, and I risk opening my eyes again.

  The room remains unfocused. A wash of soft green and white. I turn my head, and a blurry Logan crouches beside me.

  “I can’t see you,” I say, and my voice sounds like that time I caught bronchitis from Sally Revis, who coughed right in my face during Social Etiquette class.

  “Are you . . .” Logan’s clothes rustle, and when he speaks again it sounds like he’s stepped away from my side. “Is she blind?”

  “My ears work. You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not here,” I say, and he crouches back down.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just worried. It’s been . . . you’ve been asleep. For days. And it’s fine if you’re blind! I mean, it isn’t fine. Of course it isn’t, but it doesn’t matter to me. I love you just the same—”

  “You babble when I make you nervous.”

  The woman laughs. “Want more water?”

  “Yes.” I drink a few more sips and risk opening my eyes again. Still blurry, but it’s getting better. “I’m not blind, Logan. Just having a hard time focusing my eyes. Where are we?”

  Instead of answering, he leans down and presses his forehead to my chest. His hand tangles itself in my hair, and his breathing sounds unsteady.

  “I’ll give you two some time alone,” the woman says, and leaves the room.

  “What did she give me to make my brain feel so disconnected?” I ask.

  “Pain medicine. I thought you were going to die.” He lifts his face, and every sleepless hour he’s endured while waiting for me to wake up is carved into his expression. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  His voice breaks, and he lays his face against me again. I should comfort him. Say something soft and understanding. Reach for him, because I know my touch soothes his ragged edges.

  I should, but suddenly, I don’t know how. I’m not just disconnected from my body. I’m cut off from my emotions, too. I’d forgotten the price I’d paid to be free of the terrible pain of Sylph’s death.

  Not a real person.

  Not anymore.

  I didn’t realize my choice would also cut me off from Logan.

  But I don’t have to feel soft and warm inside to offer comfort. I know what’s expected of me. I can mimic the emotions.

  I can’t lift my left arm to embrace him because he’s pinning it to my side with his chest. And trying to lift my right arm sends sharp spikes of pain up my shoulder and into my jaw. I hiss in a breath, and Logan lifts his head again.

  “I can’t move my arm,” I say. Only after the words are out do I remember I was going to offer him sympathy and softness.

  His eyes shift toward my arm, and then back to my face. “You were burned. Do you remember?”

  The white stone. The little girl. And pain like nothing I’ve ever felt burrowing down below my skin like it wanted to light my bones on fire.

  “I remember. How many did we lose?”

  “Seventeen.” The loss of those seventeen lies heavy in his voice.

  I push with my left hand, trying to sit up. He leans forward to help me.

  “Take it slow. You’ve been lying down for three days.”

  The agony of those three days lies heavy in his voice, too, and I don’t know what to say. He gently fluffs the pillows I was lying on and arranges them behind my back.

  Wait.

  Pillows?

  “Where are we?” I look around the room again, and this time most of the details are clear. The floor is covered in a beautiful white rug that fills every corner of the room. The walls are the green of pistachios, and sunlight pours in from a window framed with starched white curtains.

  Four beds line the walls, two on each side. I’m sitting on a bed with a comfortable mattress beneath me and thick white blankets covering me. Directly across from me, Quinn sleeps on a similar bed. The other two beds are empty.

  “We’re in Lankenshire,” Logan says. “They’ve offered us temporary asylum while our injured heal. I’m hoping I can convince them to make the asylum permanent once they hear my case against both Rowansmark and the Commander.”

  “But the killer . . .” Familiar eyes. Cruel laughter. “He had me.”

  “Pain is such a useful thing. Don’t you feel alive?”

  “Rachel, I’m sorry,” Logan says, and the raw grief in his voice scrapes against the silence within me. I flinch and look down at my bandaged arm. What will I find when I peel back those layers? Ruined flesh? Destroyed muscle? An arm that will refuse to hold another weapon?

  “Are you listening?” Logan asks. I jerk my gaze up toward him and then let it skitter away before he can see that I don’t know what to do with his apologies or his grief.

  “Of course I am,” I say, and hope he doesn’t ask me to repeat anything he’s just said.

  “Quinn found you. The killer had you by the arm . . .” He swallows. “Quinn found you—and the others in the western quadrant—by following your screams.”

  Fury, sharp and lethal, lives beneath his regret. I used to understand that. Respond to that. I used to
be that. Now I can’t find my regret. I can’t work up any anger. I can’t do anything but stare at the boy lying in the bed across from me and wonder if he’ll die, too. If I’ll have to add his face to the list of those who tear my throat raw every night while I scream the things I no longer allow myself to think about during the day.

  The silence between me and Logan has gone on for too long. I feel the prickle of his unease even before I see it in his face. I should be saying something. Offering something. Acting like the horror, rage, and pain he feels are mirrored inside me as well.

  “I’m okay,” I say, though we both know that can’t possibly be true. I look back at Quinn, at the rise and fall of his chest, and wish he would wake up.

  Logan follows my gaze and says quietly, “He saved your life. You were already unconscious when he reached you. He crawled across the entire field with you on his back.”

  When I don’t say anything, Logan turns my face toward his. “Rachel, something’s wrong. What is it?”

  I try to dredge up concern. Fear. Anything that will make it look like I still know how to feel something when I should.

  The effort exhausts me.

  “Are you worried about the killer?” he asks. “Grieving Sylph? Upset that Quinn is taking a while to recover?”

  I nod. Yes. All of those. And none of them. Not really. A girl who isn’t quite real anymore can’t worry or grieve or feel upset.

  “I can’t make losing Sylph any easier on you, though I wish I could.” His fingers gently run through my hair. “And Quinn breathed in a lot of smoke, just like you, but he’s gaining strength quickly. As for the killer, we’ll catch him. Even if we don’t know what he looks like.”

  What he looks like. I raise my face and stare into Logan’s dark blue eyes. “His eyes reminded me of you,” I say.

  A little line digs in between his brows. “Is there anyone in camp whose eyes have reminded you of me before the fires?”

  I scroll through a mental list of the Baalboden survivors and shake my head. “I don’t think so. But maybe that’s because on the night of the fire, all I could see were his eyes. Maybe if the rest of his face is visible, the resemblance disappears. Or maybe I was delirious from pain, and we should throw out everything I just said.”