There was a muffled bang, the sound of wood splintering. Yezedi let out a squeal, then clamped a hand over her mouth in horror. She and Klaus both dropped their bags—they didn’t have time for them. The thud of boots downstairs echoed up to the room.
Scarko nodded toward Emil to shut the door. He did so, locking it quietly.
Klaus leapt into the hole that had opened up in the floor, and flashing Scarko a grin, he dropped down.
“Where does it go?” Scarko asked quietly.
“Down,” Vojtech answered.
She walked behind him and gently shoved him between his pointy shoulder blades down into the hole. He laughed as he fell through into the darkness.
“Right then, let’s go.” She nodded to the rest of them. Yezedi came slowly, peered into the gloom, and then sat down on her bottom, and scooted her way in. Alexander followed.
Emil and herself were the only ones left.
He was staring at the door, his back to her.
Go. Rhodri’s voice. She tuned it out.
“Emil!” she hissed. The sound of boots clomping up the stairs sent adrenaline coursing through her. She listened to the sounds of them, half a dozen shouts of “Clear!” as they entered each room in the large house. The accents were distinct, the sound of Vislan natives, meaning Warskian soldiers.
Emil hadn’t turned from the door.
The footsteps were growing louder.
Scarko opened her mouth, to command Emil to jump into the hole in the floorboards. The others were waiting. Her duty was to the Djavul. But Emil hadn’t moved. And as one pair of footsteps sounded out closer than the others, boots moving nimbly, differently than the rest, she stayed rooted to the spot, her focus on the sounds, the change in pitch, the closeness.
She was stuck, the altak working its way through her.
Someone wiggled the handle on the other side of the door. Emil seemed glued to the spot, and yet, after it wiggled again, he jerkily unlocked it, as if being guided by phantom hands that were not his own. Scarko couldn’t even let out a gasp.
The door flew open, and Emil just missed being struck in the head with a quick step back, his face still turned toward the open door. The shouts of Warskian soldiers were louder with the door open, and yet they were going downstairs, clomping down the staircase as a voice belonging to a boy before her called out, “Clear!” from the room that was, Scarko thought, decidedly not clear.
She stopped breathing as she looked at the boy.
Zephir.
The bruising on his face had deepened, and Scarko wondered what Vojtech had done to him before he had been drugged. But he moved quickly still. He stepped around Emil, to Scarko, and tugged her hand sharply, pulling her to the open trapdoor.
“We’ll finish this later.” His raspy voice was a whisper, and then he used his knee to shove her with enough force that she fell into the abyss, unable to stop herself or fight back with the focus of the altak.
“Took you long enough,” Klaus hissed as she landed on something soft and springy. A mattress, she realized, a flame from Yezedi’s hand flickering light into the dark tunnel.
“Where are we?” she asked, not able to speak of Zephir.
“Where’s Emil?” Yezedi was frowning. They were staggered in the narrow depths of the tunnel.
Klaus hauled Scarko up from the mattress.
It smelled of earth in the tunnel. The scents were intricate, reminding her of the Djavul.
Focus on staying awake, alert.
Scarko did so, blinking rapidly, fighting through the haze of the altak. She no longer knew if that voice in her head was hers or Rhodri’s.
“We have to go.” She didn’t know what Zephir planned to do with Emil. He could question him, he could get him to betray them, to show their inner workings, but they couldn’t wait for him.
She pushed through all of them, Vojtech furthest down the tunnel, and walked in front of him with quick, purposeful strides.
“Where’s Emil?”
She shook her head. “Yezedi, up front. I can’t see. We cannot wait for Emil.”
Yezedi did as she commanded, lighting the way with her steady flame. Vojtech said nothing.
“Where does this lead?” Scarko asked.
“Further south, away from the city. We will come up in a village. Turns out our hosts were troomla dealers,” Klaus revealed.
“Where in a village?” Scarko demanded, careful not to trip over a large rock in the path. Yezedi braced her arm against the rough stone of the tunnel, her light flickering. But she brought it back up in a second, blazing brighter. She, Scarko thought, was focusing.
“A cemetery,” Vojtech offered.
Of course it would be a cemetery. What else? Scarko smiled despite their predicament.
“We found this route while you were imprisoned.” Vojtech’s voice was cold.
She ignored it, instead focused on putting one foot in front of the other, the drug in her system making it easy to do so, so long as she didn’t lose her concentration. Once, she glanced at the orange fire cradled in Yezedi’s hand, unable to take her eyes off it. She pitched forward, but the Djavul caught her around the waist, steadying her. If it hadn’t been for his hands turning her head straight forward, she would have been enamored with him, too. The silk of his hair, the white glow of his horns.
But he didn’t let her lose focus.
One foot in front of the other, Kadezska.
A sound came from behind the group.
“It’s the Warskians,” Alexander revealed from the back. The soldiers were whispering, their voices carrying through the tunnel. Scarko’s heart seized. If they let loose a mindeta bomb down here, would they be able to keep their focus? Did they kill Emil? Was Zephir with them?
Yezedi’s flame sputtered.
They were plunged into darkness.
The whispers seemed louder in the dark. Scarko tried to tune them out, to focus on putting one slow foot in the front of the other. None of them spoke, hoping their silence would lead the Warskians away.
Did Zephir send them here? Scarko wondered, stopping mid-step. Vojtech’s cold hands found her upper back and pushed her along gently. He bent down towards her ear.
“Focus, miz rasa.” My girl. But the words were not spoken kindly.
There was another voice in her ear, one that was not Vojtech’s, not her own. She couldn’t make out the word, but it sounded like a snarl. She couldn’t think of it now, she made herself brush it aside even as the hairs on her arms stood on end.
The Warskians were moving much faster, and glancing behind her, past Vojtech, Klaus, and Alexander, she saw light moving toward them, shadows behind it. Any second, their lamps would find her group. She would have to die for the Djavul. It was her job, after all. She squared her shoulders and turned around.
Vojtech snaked out a hand, clamping down on her wrist.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he seethed.
“My job.” She tried to yank her hand away. She could see Alexander clearly now from the Warskian lamps.
“Your job is to obey my commands. You will not die here, Scarko.” She didn’t imagine the cold anxiety in his voice. If she died, she thought, who would awaken the Järenchki beneath the Royal Palace? Who would help him rule?
But if they both died, there would be no Vrakas at all. No Järenchki.
She couldn’t stop staring at the yellow light that was growing closer, inches from Alexander. His shoulders were squared, the dark grey of his Vrakan cloak starting to glimmer in the lamps from the Warskians.
Vojtech’s hand was still curled around her wrist. A low growl came from his throat. She had heard that sound before, many times when they had defended the Order against stray Warskian forces or Marazan rebels. She knew that bloodshed followed behind it.
Blood. She held a knife in her hand. There was something she was supposed to do with it, she remembered that, too. But all her mind could focus on was the sound in Vojtech’s throat, deep and guttural, enou
gh to make the hairs on the nape of her neck stand on end.
The Warskians appeared.
Three of them.
They stilled as their lamps roamed over the Vrakas, over the Djavul’s ivory horns. Scarko raised a hand over her eyes; the lamp was bright. Beyond their emerald green uniforms, she couldn’t see anything else of them, couldn’t make out any details.
But she guessed Emil was not with them.
A low laugh emitted from one of the soldiers. He let the lamp hang by his side. Scarko blinked, taking in the sight of them, lowering her hand. They were all of average height, all with swords. One with a mindeta blower strapped to his back.
Vojtech had dropped her arm, but that sound was still in his throat. As if hearing it for the first time, the middle Warskian, the one with the lamp and the blower, frowned as the other two unsheathed their swords. Scarko blinked, trying to take her attention off the growl in the Djavul’s chest.
Alexander stood staring at the Warskians, unmoving, just as she was. What was it he had focused on? Klaus’s hand was held aloft, his index finger trailing ahead of him. But nothing came forth; no ice, no motion, no magic.
Vojtech launched himself past the Vrakans, at the guard with the mindeta blower before the guard could even take a step back. His teeth went for the guard’s neck, and the Warskian bowed over, flat on his back, as the sound of teeth tearing into bone echoed throughout the tunnel, Vojtech’s growl resounding with it. There was snarling, and Scarko could see Vojtech rear back, then jut his ivory horn into the man’s already-gaping neck. The lamp had been flung down the hall, leaving only just enough light to see by, to watch the horrors.
The other Warskians stared down at Vojtech in sheer terror, watched the blood spilling from their comrade.
Another snap of bone.
Scarko was enamored with the sounds. No one moved, no one besides Vojtech.
One of the Warskians raised their sword, flipping it nervously in their hand. Scarko saw what he intended to do, saw Vojtech’s back, the gleaming blackness of his cloak, the obsidian hair. Just as the Warskian raised the sword to drive it into his lean form, Scarko’s mind seemed to snap to, and she sliced the knife in her hand across her palm, shooting blood forward into the soldier’s face, not bothering with conjuring a blood-sword at all. The man’s sword dropped harmlessly to the rocky ground with a clatter. The last Warskian stared at Scarko, wide-eyed, and then ran, hopping over Vojtech and his fallen comrade.
Yezedi shoved Scarko and Klaus aside and shot fire down the tunnel, lighting it in a blaze, catching the man in his back, the smell of burnt flesh horrid in the cramped space. The man sank to his knees, groaning. The flame died, and Yezedi stared blankly ahead at the space it had once occupied.
Vojtech slowly stood, having to duck his head to do so in the tunnel. There was blood on his lips, down his chin. He smiled, pale eyes blazing.
“Hungry, Scarko?” He gestured to the massacred man on the ground at his feet.
Scarko’s eyes flicked to the blood. So much of it, it ran in rivers around Vojtech’s boots. But she wasn’t hungry.
“I don’t like this drug.” Her eyes were still on the blood.
“Emil is gone. Let’s not lose another,” Klaus said from beside her. He took her arm, steered her around, and sent a wave of ice lit in pale blue down her arm to get her to focus.
We need a light,” Vojtech reminded them, following as they walked in the darkness. There was a sound of scratching in the dirt, maybe along the wall, and then a flame flickered from ahead where Alexander led the way, slowly, painfully slow, holding a match aloft.
The tunnel sloped downwards, the only light from Alexander’s flickering flame, not as bright as Yezedi’s, but enough to see by, kept lit by a small bit of her magic. Scarko’s mind went to her feet again, watching the ground she moved on without glancing up once. She bumped into Yezedi, in front of her, a few times, but neither spoke, only kept looking down, kept moving. She knew Vojtech was at her back, could smell the iron on his body from the Warskian soldier. But she didn’t glance at him. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she thought of Emil and Zephir. What had happened to them? How had Zephir escaped the coffin? Had the Warskians let him free? What would they do when they found out he let her go?
But she couldn’t think about it enough to let it bother her, not with her eyes on her own boots. Step after step, no more footsteps beyond them, just their own labored breaths, their own hearts beating in the tunnel. Scarko focused on the pattern of hers, focused on how it hammered in her chest, rapid fire. It never, she thought wryly, seemed to slow.
They could have walked for minutes, maybe hours, she didn’t know. The drug kept her from feeling tired. It kept her alert—too alert at times, like when she glanced back at Vojtech and couldn’t take her eyes from his own. He had not smiled as he turned her round again, setting her on the dark tunnel’s path once more.
But just when she thought they would escape without war, when she thought that perhaps they would have time to plan for the upcoming battle after all, when she thought the Praeminister would not get to her again, there were more footsteps. More whispered voices, more Warskians.
From both sides of the tunnel.
They all stopped, the flame once more dying out. There were more than three, Scarko could hear clearly. Wherever the tunnel ended, there had to have been Warskian soldiers nearby, to get there so impossibly fast. And they were closing in on them. She could see on either side the lights from their lamps growing brighter, and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the shadows they cast in their wake: Vojtech’s horns, curled back from his head, his long hair like a sheet of shadow beneath.
With a shuttering breath, Scarko realized they would have to leave the tunnel. The voices were too many.
“The only way out is—” Vojtech started, glancing upwards.
“Through?” Klaus asked, brows knitted together.
Vojtech rolled his eyes. “Up.” He pointed.
Taking the cue, Klaus and Yezedi thrust their hands upwards, even as the light from the Warskians’ lamps grew brighter. Klaus’s ice and Yezedi’s fire twirled through one another, streams of pale blue and vivid orange cut through the rock and dirt above the tunnel entrance.
The Warskians were drawing closer, their footsteps echoing on both sides. Scarko tried not to listen, tried not to let the altak muddle her mind.
Vojtech pulled her close as Yezedi and Klaus blasted through the rock above them, the entire tunnel shaking, debris scattering above their heads. Scarko wondered if it would collapse atop them. She spit out bits of dirt that landed on her upturned mouth.
The Warskians’ steps grew closer. The frozen blue from Klaus’s fingertips blasted beside Yezedi’s stream of fire and then, when a large block of earth fell to the tunnel narrowly missing Alexander, Scarko could see above them. The night sky.
“Just a bit more,” Klaus grimaced as he said the words, and Scarko saw his hands shaking. People were delicate things; the earth was strength incarnate.
The hole widened, and as Scarko watched the lamps from the Warskian soldiers on either side of them draw nearer, Vojtech swung her up, gripping her by the waist to the lip of the hole in the earth. She latched on; it felt at once hot and cold, from her friends’ magic. She scrambled through, hearing the soldiers’ loud voices. Glancing around under the cold Kezdan sky, she saw they were in a dead field, a forest lining the edges.
She reached down for someone’s hand.
Yezedi’s hot one grabbed hers, and she scrambled up. Scarko could see the emerald green of the soldiers. There were half a dozen on either side, maybe more, one with a mindeta blower.
Vojtech’s growl rang out through the tunnel.
She was supposed to be down there. She was his guard. Rhodri’s words rang hollow in her head: You think he needs you to guard him?
Klaus scrambled up next and then Alexander as the guards unsheathed their swords. They all turned to reach for Vojtech.
A sw
ord flashed in the darkness below, and Scarko cried out. But Vojtech dodged it easily and then leapt upon the soldier, his fangs sinking into the man’s neck. A horrifying crunch rang through the earth.
The other soldiers began to back off, save for the one with the mindeta blower. Scarko made to leap back down, but Vojtech, without looking towards her, called out, “Hold her.” At his command, Alexander and Klaus gripped her arms tightly.
She was not his guard.
What am I? She wondered as she watched the bloodshed below.
Something more, an answer, not her own. She gasped, stopped struggling against Alexander and Klaus.
The mindeta blower flicked on, a whirring sound, and Scarko scented the sickly-sweet plant, waited for the numbness to set in, the dullness. Yet the altak held, even as she could not tear her eyes away from what happened several feet below her in the earth—the dead Warskian and his gaping throat, another dead, and then another, the other nine pushing back like cowards away from Vojtech. But Vojtech hadn’t taken altak, and for a horrifying moment, he only stood, stock still, in the cloud of pollen the mindeta blower unleashed.
She yanked on her arms, and Alexander and Klaus’s grip slackened.
But before she could swing her legs over the hole into the tunnel, the blower had stilled, and the soldier looked on with a satisfied smile at Vojtech, frozen in place.
For only the blink of an eye.
Then Vojtech lunged at the man, snarling, and he ripped the mindeta blower from his back, crushing the tube in his hands. The man screamed, a wild, helpless sound, and Vojtech crushed his windpipe between his teeth. The scream died into a grotesque hiss.
When he turned to look up at Scarko and the others, blood dripped down his face, and he grinned.
The other soldiers ran screaming.
They didn’t wait once Vojtech had hauled himself elegantly up from the tunnel. Instead, they moved quickly, quietly, headed toward the forest’s edge after Alexander used his shadows to fill the hole in the earth where they had escaped, rendering it useless from below.
They had spent an entire day in that tunnel, and Scarko had no idea where they were, where it led to, or how far the city was behind them. Only when they had surrounded themselves with the dead woods, the moon barely visible overhead, did they stop to catch their breaths.
Stranger Rituals Page 20
