The streets of Eastridge were much more crowded than they'd been on his previous trips for new clothes and toiletries. For the most part, people kept to themselves, but sometimes he’d catch a passing stare, always from someone Grandpa's age. He wondered if he should hide himself better, if maybe the older ones thought, like the Huntsman the day he’d met Tehya and Ariana, that he was someone else. A prince. Ha! Or worse, what if the Huntsmen had put out a search for him after all?
He fought the urge to tear down every one of those awful posters. He couldn’t do that. It would draw attention. That was the last thing he needed when he had no means, etâmic or otherwise, to protect himself from an attack.
The thought chilled him. He glanced at the tower hovering above them, its light still clear.
From his vantage point, as they walked steadily closer, the spires of the towers looked like giant, branchless trees twisted around one another by the harsh hands of a winding wind, and then hardened to salty stone.
“Took you long enough,” Perry said, pulling Hunter’s gaze from the sky as he and Finn emerged from the shadows of the spires.
They both seemed relatively unaffected by the ten-block run. But Dilyn leaned against the closest building, hands on his knees, sucking air as if there was a hole in his lungs.
Tehya unhooked her arm from Hunter’s and pushed past Perry and Finn. “You alright, Dilyn?”
The sudden absence of Tehya’s warmth made Hunter shiver.
Dilyn heaved a couple breaths, nodded, and straightened. “Yeah,” he wheezed. “I will be.”
Perry clapped him on the back. "Good you aren't trying out for the Kings team,” he said, then laughed and started toward the wide double doors of the nearest spire.
“The key to Kings is mental,” Finn pointed out haughtily as they followed him through the doors and crossed the cavernous entry hall to an opulent, black stone desk.
A squat, frumpy woman lounged in the chair behind the counter. She lifted one eyebrow and peered at them over her book, clearly irritated to have her reading interrupted. “Clearance?” The tone of her voice was unmistakeable: she wanted to get back to her book as soon as possible.
Perry leaned on the counter and flashed her a little gold pin he’d stuck on the inside of his coat. It looked like a page from a book.
“I’m Perry Madison,” he said. “Son of Ona and Levin Madison. They asked if I could wrangle some interns to sort through a section of the records room.” He waved his hand in the air. “Important files—copies have gone missing. Something about… well, something. I stopped listening. Anyway, they need the files before midday.” He huffed, looking so annoyed by this made-up errand that Hunter found himself feeling sorry for him.
The woman shifted in her chair, but was otherwise unmoved, or uninterested in what Perry was saying. “Basement. Second door on the left.”
Perry nodded, drew away from the counter, and they were in. Hunter flooded with relief. Unaware until that moment how anxious he'd been.
“That was easy,” Tehya mused, when the door had shut behind them and they wound their way down the poorly-lit stairwell. “You made it sound so convincing. We wouldn't have been able to get in otherwise.”
“Probably would have. But you would have had to fill out forms,” Perry reasoned. “And I thought we wanted stealth.”
“Nothing with you is stealthy, Perry,” Finn pointed out.
They all laughed at this, the sound spilling down the stairwell. It made Hunter feel good—almost safe—as if the attack on the old farmhouse was just one of his vivid bad dreams.
For a moment, he entertained thoughts of being at Ruekridge. He didn’t know where it was—the secret was too important—but he knew how his grandpa had described it, and he imagined himself there, surrounded by his new friends. Each of them donning their uniforms in their respective Order's colors, waving at him as he passed them in the Square on his way to Eerden Tower. Or was it Aeriel Tower? Did Tierens have specific living quarters? There was so much he wanted to know. But he would have to ask later. Then they reached the long, hot record room—overstuffed with massive leather binders covered in dust. It was time. If he was going to have any chance of finding his parents, it would be here, in this room.
“Alright. We need records of birth, sorted by race,” Tehya said.
“This way.” Perry marched down the narrow lane between reading tables. He led them to the back wall, to a large table with room enough for all five of them. “Birth records are on these two aisles.” He pointed behind him with his thumbs. “Tieren are probably on one of these sides here.” He indicated the shelves closest to the wall. “If those don’t turn up anything, we’ll search Eerdens, since that’s what you thought you were.” He nodded at Hunter. Then he clapped his hands together. “Let’s get to it.”
Hunter didn’t hesitate. He started toward the shelves and grabbed the first record book that felt right. It was Tieren, but not the right sub-race. He shut it and stuffed it back on the shelf.
Dilyn appeared beside him. “Close?”
Hunter shook his head. “Tierenved.”
“Ah.” Dilyn scanned the shelves, pulled out a book two levels below Hunter’s, and opened it. “Tierenvar,” he said. He looked past Hunter to the shelves across the aisle, where Tehya and Perry were searching. “What have you got?”
“Tierenmar,” Perry answered.
Tehya pulled a book out. “Tierendem.”
Dilyn dropped to his knees, crawling on the floor as he scanned the bottom shelf. “That means…” He reached for a book. “Gorse. Tierenvem.”
Finn stooped, pulling a book from the shelf above Dilyn’s. He opened it. “One shelf off,” he said, handing the open book to Hunter.
He took it. At the top of the page was the word he wanted. “Tierendar,” he read aloud, scanning the pages. Each page had just three entries; names, places, more names, dates. Confusion trickled in. “The, uh… the date says four hundred sixty.” He racked his brain for the calendar his grandpa had written out. But the only thing he remembered was that the seasons were off—that spring in Kansas was fall in Ladria. “What year is it now?”
“Eight eighty-nine,” Perry said, taking the binder from Hunter’s hands. “It shouldn’t go that far back…” He flipped to the end, frowned. “Hm.”
“What?” Dilyn asked, standing.
Hunter leaned in to see the page. “It’s blank.”
Perry flipped to the middle, then quickly through until he reached blank pages again. “Finn. You picked out the only binder that holds Tierendar births.”
Finn shrugged. "I'm that good."
Bardoc was right. Tierendar was very rare indeed.
“The last recorded birth was…” Perry leafed through the pages.
Dilyn peered over the book. “Looks like year eight hundred seventeen."
Perry examined it, then turned his eyes to Hunter. “I’m impressed. You look… fourteen for a fifty-eight year old.”
Dilyn snickered. “What’s your secret, Master…” he checked the page, “Lan Philpps?”
Hunter deflated. He’d been so close. Now they’d have to search through hundreds more books to find his name.
“Wait a minute,” Finn said. “Look at that.” He put his hands on the pages and spread the book until its spine creaked.
“What?” Tehya poked her head over Dilyn’s shoulder.
Hunter saw it now, too. “A page was torn out.”
The rough edges of the missing page poked up like freshly mown lawn, but it was clear that someone had taken great care to leave as little evidence of the page as possible.
“Do you think it had your name on it?” Dilyn asked.
Hunter considered for a moment. “My luck? Yeah.” But what purpose this served, erasing him from the records, he had no idea.
“Why would anyone do that?” Dilyn wondered.
Hunter shook his head. “I don’t know.” Maybe to make it harder for Falken Fyrenn to find me.
“We should check the Eerden records,” Tehya said. “Just to be sure.”
“Good idea.” Perry snapped the book shut and handed it to Hunter. “Let’s all grab a few of the Eerden catalogs and search. One year can span a couple of those things, easily.”
They followed Perry, started dragging books off the shelves, then brought them over to the table and set to work.
Half an hour later, Perry grumbled and stood. “Seriously. Why do people do this?”
Everyone looked up from their books.
“Do what?” Dilyn asked.
Perry lifted a loose page and waved it at them. “Tear these out.”
Finn shrugged. “Who cares?”
“I do,” Perry said. “It’s annoying.”
“You think something's annoying?” Tehya snickered.
Perry ignored the jest and turned to Hunter. “Here I was, thinking I’d found your torn out entry—it’s stuffed in the right set of dates for it. I mean, the exact spot it should be. But it’s an article about something that happened a whole season later.”
“Am I in those records?”
“No.”
So his name had been torn out. On purpose. “What’s the article?” Maybe it would be something useful. A clue?
Perry flicked the sheet at him.
There was a grainy photo of a house aflame. For a moment, Hunter thought the coloring was skewed, but the black of the night and the green of the lawn insisted that it wasn’t. The flames eating away at the house were as blue as a summer sky.
The outer walls were frosted glass, turning ashy grey with smoke. Below the photo was a caption that read:
Rockwood Clearing, Eastridge Township: The home of Aeolus and Loreina Rueklin, outspoken members of the Ionian Rights Rebellion, burned to the ground while the Fyrennian Elite Guard looked on. The Rueklins were convicted of treason and sealed in the house moments before the fire began. There were no survivors. The Rueklins’ remains were collected for proof of death, then destroyed.
“Rockwood Clearing?” Tehya said. “That’s out by Ariana's—” the words died in her mouth, her lips crinkled into a pout.
Hunter warred with frustration and a curious hope. The article was pointless. And yet, he’d only recently discovered he was Tieren, meaning that he would have checked this very spot for his birth record. Was it coincidence that the article was there? Maybe. But his real birth record had been removed. So maybe it was a clue. Or maybe he just wanted it to be.
Perry left the table and disappeared into the shelves without a word.
“What's he up to?” Dilyn wondered.
“He didn’t take anything with him,” Tehya said. “But while he's up, we ought to put all these back.” She nodded at the table.
“Probably,” Finn said, scooping up a couple books and hauling them off.
“Guess so,” Hunter grumbled. What else was there to do? Until he figured out what, if anything, this article was telling him, he was at a dead end. He folded the article and stuffed it in his pocket, then closed the book and headed to the shelves.
He returned to find Perry at the table with a stack of black, hardboard binders that were double the thickness of any of the regular ones they’d been looking through.
“What’s all this?” Tehya asked.
Perry doled out a binder to each of them. “Just want to see something,” he said. “Start searching for the days around the Autumn Solstice. I’ve got the right year.”
Hunter frowned, pulled the article from his pocket and checked the date. The torn edge of the page was jagged and only part of the date was visible: rty-third of Autumn, Eight-hundred-fifty-seven. “You’re looking for where this goes?” he asked, holding up the page.
Perry glanced up. “Mhm.”
Hunter sat quickly and flipped open his binder. It was filled with articles from several different newspapers: Heromalii Informer, Cerulean Sun, Ladria Viewpoint... but the dates were early Autumn. None of them matched. Hunter set his binder down and looked around.
Tehya relaxed back in her chair as she read. She blew at a loose strand of hair that hung across her face, but didn’t bother brushing it away.
Perry and Dilyn both hunched over their binders. Perry shook his head, mumbled, turned the page. Dilyn tucked his chin in his hands, his nose buried in the pages. Had he fallen asleep?
Finn studied his binder as though perusing a menu, one leg propped on another table’s chair. He seemed to actually be reading the articles.
For a moment, Hunter felt frustration building. Finn was supposed to be searching, not reading leisurely.
Then Finn straightened. “That’s interesting,” he said.
“What?”
“This page is… well, it’s torn, but it’s been pieced back together.”
Hunter’s heart leapt and fluttered like a trapped bird. “What do you mean?”
Finn set the binder down, the open pages facing Hunter. On the right hand side, with a headline that read: King Fyrenn Reveals Heir to the Throne, the page had clearly been torn and pieced back together. But the dates didn’t match.
“The tear looks just like the other one,” Tehya said, fingering the jagged line where the two pages hooked together.
She was right. Hunter flattened out the article about the fire and laid it over the impostor page. The torn edges were another perfect match. And now the date read: Forty-third of Autumn, Eight-hundred-fifty-seven
“A record keeper wouldn’t have done this,” Perry said.
Then who did?
“What’s it say?” Dilyn asked.
They leaned in, their heads crowded around his own.
Below the title was a massive photograph of a much younger Falken Fyrenn, standing proudly at a pulpit, surrounded by guards in immaculate red and black uniforms. His dark hair was woven through with a kingly band of jewels. A crown. His fiery, golden-brown eyes glowed from the depths of darkened sockets.
Flanking the King were three women. On his left, a lean, dark-umber skinned beauty with black hair pulled into a tight ponytail. She wore nothing more than a few strategically placed leather straps that crisscrossed over her neck, chest, and stomach. The straps attached to the leather waistband of a floor-length skirt made of what he could only guess to be tissue paper, based on its transparency. For an instant, he pictured Tehya in something like that, but he forgot how to breathe and choked on the air.
“You alright, Hunter?” Tehya asked.
He blinked and nodded, his cheeks burning, and forced his thoughts back to the photo.
Beside the dark woman was a petite blonde with a round face and wide, haunted eyes. She hardly looked older than Tehya, though she must've been, as she had an ample, womanly chest strapped down by a single band of bright red fabric. She was tan, like the schoolgirls back home after a summer at Flatrock River. Her skirt was probably just a bandana, repurposed. Her legs were lean and strong.
The third woman, standing on Falken’s right, was as pale as moonlight. Her dark hair hung in perfect waves to the middle of her back. She wore a tight, complicated weave of red and black ribbon that covered her from her neck to her hips—where the ribbons were knotted. The spare ends hung loose and uneven to her knees. Held tightly in her small arms was a stoic, resigned-looking baby boy.
“I didn’t know he kept the prince’s birth a secret for two seasons,” Tehya mused. “How odd.”
“It’s really not,” Finn said. “Falken was squashing the last stand of the Heledian rebellion at the time. He wouldn’t have called attention to anything that might’ve been perceived as a weakness. The heir’s one serious weakness.”
“Thank you, Instructor Donovan,” Perry jeered.
Finn ignored him. “Either way, the spade didn’t do too bad for himself with the wives, did he?”
Hunter snickered along with Perry and Dilyn. Tehya just huffed. “Boys,” she muttered. “You don’t see anything above their breasts.”
“Not true,” Perry said, proudly tapping the woman with
the baby. “This one’s wearing a necklace.”
Hunter peered closer. Perry was right. On a thin silver chain, a pendant nestled between her collarbones. It had three metallic stars encircling a blood red stone. The exact same pendant, without the blood, that he’d held in his dreams.
Hunter slipped off his chair. He caught himself and stood. But his legs were suddenly weak.
“Hunter?” Dilyn and Tehya’s voices sounded far away.
He needed air.
“Hunter? What’s the matter?” Just a buzz of words.
He grabbed the page, jerked it out of the binder.
“Hey, come on. That’s not—”
Hunter folded both articles, stuffed them in his pocket, and left the record room, his mind reeling.
Chapter 11
Despite the aches of thirst, the heat radiating from her fatigued body, the chill air clawing at her tender skin, and the hammering pulse in her head, Ariana had soldiered through the night, following the horses' trail. And just as morning arrived, she came upon the crumbling stone streets of a quiet town where the tracks faded and disappeared. She listened. But she heard no hoof beats or voices. Without hesitation, she popped in and out of the empty houses, hoping to find something to drink or someone to help her. But the town was abandoned and had been for some time.
Warmth was returning with the sun. For the moment, it was welcome. She stared down the wide street, gauging the height of the buildings. She wasn’t so far behind that she could’ve missed the horses leaving. If she could get up high enough, she’d find them.
Around the back of the nearest building, she found a heavy wooden ladder leaning against the wall. She climbed carefully toward the flat roof, her arms and legs shaking slightly as she reached each new rung.
The town was no more than a thousand strides in any direction. Few buildings were more than double her height. Most were packed tight enough to hop from one to another.
She tread lightly across the unstable rooftops, occasionally slipping on loose bits of shale-shingle, cringing at the noise as those bits hit the ground. The buildings were old. There was a chance one might cave in. But she needed to conserve energy—the precious little she had left—so canvassing the roads would be even more foolish than this.
The Onyx Vial (Shadows of The Nine Book 1) Page 11
