Defiance

by C. J. Redwine

  I tighten my hand around Oliver’s arm and make a decision. Logan will just have to figure out a way to smuggle Oliver out with us. I refuse to leave him behind.

  We’re nearly past the gate when the ground beneath us trembles. Little pebbles and loose grains of sand skip and slide across the cobblestones. Outside the gate, someone screams.

  I lock eyes with Oliver, and he pushes me off the road as the citizens nearest the gate panic. Knocking each other down, Protectors half-dragging their women, they race past us. I stumble off the cobblestones and onto the uneven space of grass between the gate and the Market road. Oliver is right behind me.

  The vibrations beneath us increase in strength, and I dig my fingers into Oliver’s arm.

  “It will surface outside the Wall,” he says. His voice sounds like he’s carrying a weight he can’t bear to shoulder.

  I look through the still-open gate and my stomach sinks. Baalboden citizens are out there. They left for the sanctioned highwaymen trading day, and they won’t have time to cross the perimeter of scorched earth to get back inside the Wall before the Cursed One arrives.

  Even as I finish the thought, several citizens break free of the frightened, milling pack at the edge of the Wasteland and sprint toward the safety of the gate. Others scramble to climb trees or get in the highwaymen’s wagons, though I can’t see how that will help. A guard leaves the gatehouse and races past us on horseback, no doubt heading toward the Commander’s compound.

  “Get back. Rachel, get back!” Oliver pulls at me as another wave of terrified citizens fight to get out of harm’s way and back into Lower Market.

  I take an elbow to the chest from a husky man in a tattered cloak, and spin out of the way before the mule rider behind him can crush me beneath his steed’s hooves.

  “Rachel!” Oliver yells as the same husky man gets knocked off the road by the mule and slams into Oliver, sending them both sprawling. The ground shakes so much it’s hard to find my footing, but I claw my way over to them, grab the man’s arm, and wrestle him off Oliver.

  Behind me, the screams are eclipsed by a raw, primal roar of fury, and I whip my head around to see the glistening black length of the Cursed One burst through the ground. It’s huge, nearly half the height of the Wall, and just as thick. It’s my first actual sighting of the beast, and every instinct in me screams to run, but I can’t look away. Besides, running means leaving Oliver behind, and I won’t do that. I just have to hope the legend about the Cursed One never attacking inside Baalboden’s Wall is true.

  Lashing its serpentlike tail, the beast crushes two of the citizens running toward the gate, but its attention is on the horde of highwaymen and citizens in front of it. Horror trembles through me as the creature opens its mouth and strafes the closest wagons and people with fire.

  “Rachel, leave!” Oliver is yelling at me, but I can barely hear him over the screams.

  People are burning, throwing themselves on the ground and beating at the flames, but the beast just keeps spewing fire at anything that moves. Sickened, I turn and hang on to Oliver. I want to cry, to give voice to the rising shock and terror within me, but Dad taught me better than that. Losing your head in a crisis is a good way to become the crisis.

  Instead, I loop my arm under Oliver’s and tug. “Get up. We can’t stay here.”

  The man with the tattered cloak still lies where I threw him, his eyes fastened on the destruction outside the gate. I punch him in the shoulder. “Hey! Help me get him up.”

  He rips his gaze away from the carnage and barely glances at me. “Help him yourself,” he says, and shoves himself to his feet. He’s gone before I can tell him what a filthy coward he is.

  I swear and plant my feet so I can leverage Oliver off the ground. Behind me, the creature roars, people wail, and fire snaps viciously. I refuse to look. As I finish hauling Oliver to his feet, hoofbeats pound the cobblestones. I look up. The Commander now sits astride the guard’s horse and is galloping straight for the gate, his whip flashing as he urges the terrified animal toward a certain doom.

  Oliver wraps his arm around my waist as the Commander reaches the gate, which is choked with desperate citizens fleeing the attack. He never slows. Instead, he slashes with the whip, driving people into the side of the Wall. One man can’t move out of his way fast enough, and the Commander rides over the top of him. The man lies crumpled and still in the Commander’s wake.

  He’s going to die. Be disintegrated right in front of us. Fear and bitter hope twine themselves together within me until I can’t tell them apart. I don’t want Baalboden to be thrown into leaderless chaos, but I can’t pretend I’d mourn him.

  The beast lashes its tail, narrowly missing the Commander. His horse shies and refuses to move closer, despite repeated lashes of the whip. Abandoning the horse, the Commander leaps to the ground and strides toward the creature. People still stagger in through the gate, burned and limping. In the Wasteland, little remains of the highwaymen and citizens trapped in the Cursed One’s fire.

  Before the Commander can reach the beast, it trembles, a shudder running the length of its monstrous black body. Pointing its snout into the air, it sniffs and shudders again. Then just as suddenly as it appeared, it dives back below the ground, leaving the Commander standing alone outside the gate.

  “Why?” I look at Oliver. “Why did it leave like that?”

  He stares at the flames, his expression haunted. “Some say the Commander has power over it.”

  “That’s ridiculous. The Commander never even got that close to it,” I say as the Commander ignores the victims of the beast’s fire and strides back toward Baalboden.

  “No one else showed the courage to face down the Cursed One in defense of our citizens,” Oliver says quietly, like it pains him to admit it.

  The Commander reaches the gate and steps over the body lying there without a downward glance. Fury bites at me, chasing the last of my terror away.

  “Was it courage to whip people out of the way? To run a man down like his life was worth nothing?”

  “Shh.” Oliver shakes my arm as the Commander nears us. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “Somebody has to.”

  Oliver’s voice is low and fierce. “The Cursed One never attacks inside Baalboden’s Wall. Living under the Commander’s rule is the price we pay for our protection. In here, we’re safe.”

  “Not safe enough.” I meet the Commander’s dark gaze as he strides past us. His stare is penetrating, and my hands grow clammy at the way his eyes slide from me to Oliver as if he’s just remembered something important.

  We stand on the grass until the Commander is long out of sight. I spend the entire time thinking of ways Logan and I can take Oliver with us when we go.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  LOGAN

  I step out of Thom’s Tankard, pleased with my purchases, and walk straight into chaos. Citizens race up the roads from the western reaches of Lower Market, pushing and shoving to gain a better position over each other. Some are crying. Yelling. Screaming.

  I whip my head toward Lower Market and see the black smudge of smoke on the horizon.

  Rachel. Oliver.

  All that still matters to me in this world is somewhere down in Lower Market.

  The crush of people move in mindless panic. Those who hesitate or turn against the mob are flung to the side or trampled beneath pounding feet.

  I dive into the edges of the throng and push against the flow. At first, it’s easy to let the occasional citizen bounce off me, but as I leave South Edge and enter the Market proper, the crowds thicken and my progress slows.

  I need another route to Oliver’s. Ducking into the nearest stall, I reach into my boots and pull out my knives. Seconds later, I slip out the back and use them to climb my way to the roof. Drive the blade in, pull myself up, drive the other blade in, pull myself up, and then yank the first blade free so I can do it again.

  Once I reach the rooftop, I can see that the smoke is com
ing from outside the Wall. Which means Oliver and Rachel should be safe inside his tent. He’d never try to move through this mob with Rachel by his side.

  A deafening roar splits the air, and the truth hits me, a sickening blow. The Cursed One is out there. On a sanctioned highwayman trading day. Any citizen still outside the gate is as good as dead.

  I’ve never known the beast to surface so close to Baalboden, and even though every citizen knows the Commander claims to be able to protect us, I don’t trust him. The creature could enter the city limits at any second, and then Oliver and Rachel could die.

  I don’t think. I just move.

  I’m running, gathering speed before I even realize what I’m doing. I reach the edge of the roof and leap. Nearly missing the next roof, I crash hard to my knees. The edge of one of my knives nicks my palm and blood flows warmly down my arm. I shove the blades back into their sheaths, push myself up, and start running again.

  In the distance, screams mingle with the mindless roar of the beast. I tune them out and take a flying leap onto the side of a tent. The canvas sways precariously, and I snatch the metal pole that braces the corner closest to me. Swinging over the pole, I run and jump, slamming into the side of the next stall.

  As I climb onto the roof, I hear hoofbeats pounding behind me and turn to see the Commander thundering down the road, heedless of the panicked people desperately trying to get out of his way. The gate is a mere thirty yards ahead. Oliver’s tent is at least eighty yards to my left. I’m about to make the turn when a flash of brilliant red near the gate catches my eye. I strain to see past the running people, and for one second, I have a clear sight line.

  Fear seizes my chest with icy fingers, and my feet move before my brain can finish telling me I’m looking at Rachel. Caught in the crush of panicked, screaming people at the gate. Close enough to the beast that if the Commander is wrong about his control over it, she’ll be one of the first to die.

  I hit the roof next to me, skid across it, and leap into the air without pausing for breath.

  If Rachel is there, surely Oliver is with her. My heart pounds, a desperate rhythm driving me forward. I nearly fall on the next leap, and slide to the ground. Time to start fighting my way through the crowds.

  The beast outside the Wall bellows and the ground shudders, nearly throwing me to my knees. Quiet descends, sharp and unnatural, punctuated only by the sound of sobs and the distant crackling of fire. I skirt two men who stand, cloaks still smoking, shining pink skin blistering along their arms. They’ve just come from outside, and now they stand frozen, looking around as if wondering where the beast will attack next.

  I don’t know if it will surface again, but I’m going to be standing in front of Rachel and Oliver if it does.

  I see her now. She’s clinging to Oliver, and though her body trembles, she looks fierce and ready for battle. A handful of people pass between us, and when I see her again, she’s staring at the gate with furious eyes. I follow her gaze, and see the Commander stepping over a man’s prone body. He meets Rachel’s eyes, and dread seizes me at the speculative look he gives Oliver.

  He knows we love Oliver. If we don’t leave on the Commander’s schedule and bring the package back to him, he’ll sentence Oliver to death for our crimes. My heart aches, sudden and fierce.

  Oliver will just have to come with us. I have four days to figure out how. I hurry across the cobblestones as the Commander disappears into Lower Market and gather Rachel and Oliver to me. Oliver claps me on the back, and I see the relief in his eyes that both of his surrogate grandchildren are still alive.

  Rachel leans into me, but the tension vibrating through her resonates with me as well. I pull her closer, and watch the flames eat through the remains of the highwaymen’s wagons and gutter into nothing.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  RACHEL

  We don’t leave the cottage for another two days while Logan tinkers with his invention and works on a plan to smuggle Oliver safely out of Baalboden, and I brush up on my knife-wielding skills. When we talk, we focus on how to leave. How to deal with the Cursed One if he attacks while we’re in the Wasteland. And what might be inside the package the Commander wants so badly. We leave alone both the topic of our almost-kiss and the way we clung to each other in the wake of the beast’s attack, and I’m grateful. I don’t know how I feel about any of it, and I don’t want to be the one to ruin things by talking about it.

  In addition to a pair of guards, the tracker Melkin haunts the orchard near the house at night, and another tracker watches the cottage during the day as well. We can’t do anything about the constant surveillance, so Logan works harder on his gadget, and I move on from my knife to practice with Dad’s Switch.

  The Switch is one of Logan’s more useful inventions. It looks like a solid wooden walking staff, but one end is weighted enough to crush a man’s skull, and the other conceals a spring-loaded double-edged blade. It takes hours of work before I can balance the heavier end, swing it like a mallet, and knock Bob, our practice dummy, flying. Even so, I’m still off balance enough that if I have to deal with two foes at once, I’ll find myself skewered at the end of a sword before I can regain my footing, and I’ve yet to manage springing the blade after the initial hit without getting knocked to the ground.

  Bob is about Logan’s height and weighs in at an even one hundred seventy pounds. He’s got me by forty pounds and five inches. Dad always said if I could take out the dummy, I could handle any man who tried to give me trouble.

  I doubt he was thinking of Commander Chase when he said it.

  Last year, Logan strung a heavy wire between two trees and hooked Bob to it. The dummy slides, swings, and moves with my own momentum, and while it isn’t the same as fighting something with intelligence, he keeps me on my toes. I can run him through with my knife, yank the blade free, duck, and spin around to bury my weapon in his back while he slides toward me. The Switch is another story. I slam the weighted end of it into Bob’s side, but can’t spin the blade side around before my sparring partner swings back and sends me sprawling.

  After my fourth disastrous attempt, I let fly with the most creative swear word I ever heard my father say and toss the Switch onto the grass beside me. I can’t master it. Can’t swing it around in time to deliver the crucial blow that could mean the difference between life and death. I lay back on the grass, squint against the glare of the afternoon sun, and suddenly feel like crying.

  With Dad by my side, I’d always felt invincible. Now I feel like a freshly shorn lamb, stripped bare of a shield I never thought I’d lose. Whatever was in that package he refused to deliver, whatever he’s keeping from the Commander’s grasp, I have to help him. And to help him, I have to be prepared to face anything the Wasteland has to offer. Which means that failing at the Switch isn’t an option.

  I slowly push myself to my feet. Grasp the Switch. Close my eyes. Take a deep breath that smells of grass, sun-warmed dirt, and the fresh buds slowly unfurling in the orchard next door. If I keep my eyes closed, I can imagine Dad, standing behind me, his arms wrapped around me, his hands covering mine and holding me in place.

  I widen my stance, crouch, and remember the last time we sparred together.

  “Drop your shoulders a bit. You’ll need the room to move.” He tightens his grip on my hands when they start to slide together. “No, you don’t. Nice, wide grip. Keep it loose. Gives you balance and control. There’s my girl.”

  I drop my shoulders, widen my grip, and keep my eyes closed.

  “All right, now, you’ve got a weapon on either end. You’ll only have seconds to decide which one to use.” He lets go of my hands, and places calloused palms on my shoulders. “Big man, sprinting toward you.”

  “Weapon?”

  “Doesn’t matter, Rachel. He’s twice your size and his speed will bring him in range within seconds. Which end do you use?” His fingers curl around my shoulders as if willing me to know the answer.

  “Blade. No time
to swing the weighted end.” I slide the blade free and crouch, the afternoon sun painting crimson swirls against my closed eyelids.

  “Very good.” He squeezes my shoulders and walks around to face me. “Now, if you must engage an opponent who is bigger, stronger, and faster, what do you do?”

  “Take him down. Make it so he can’t get up and come after me.”

  “Yes. He won’t expect a Baalboden girl to know how to stop him. You get one chance to surprise him. Make full use of that advantage. Where do you make the first cut?” His eyes are deep gray, like a sky before the rain falls, and the fierce determination in them fills me with the same.

  I’m Jared Adams’s daughter. I can do this.

  “Let him come in, then spin and slash the inner thigh as I turn. Cut open the artery.” I draw in a deep breath, imagine a man barreling toward me, let him come almost too close for comfort, and then spin and slash, planting my left foot to keep my balance for the next move.

  “Good! He’s bleeding, but the pain hasn’t hit yet, and he doesn’t realize how badly he’s hurt. He’ll try to come after you. How do you stop him?”

  “Cut the Achilles tendon as he passes me, then get out of range.” I spin and slash again, the Switch beginning to feel like an extension of my arm as I thrust, turn, and slice in tune with my father’s voice in my head.

  He’s clapping, pride and love written on his face. “You did it. I knew you could. I always knew you could.”

  “But what if I can’t?” I lower the Switch. “What if one day I don’t know what to do?” My throat closes, and I have to force myself to whisper, “What if you’re gone, and I have no one left to teach me?”

  But the scene in my mind falls silent. I never asked him those questions last time we sparred together. I never knew I should. And now, when I desperately want to fill in the blanks, to hear his voice tell me how to escape Baalboden, how to find him, and how to keep the Commander from finding what Dad so desperately wanted kept hidden, he’s gone.