Guardian of the Vale

by Shoemaker,Tamara

  Not just an allegiance, Alayne thought, as she remembered Malachi's half-cocked admission that Tarry was the Alliance.

  All that time, the woman had sat outside of Chairman Dorner's office, listening through his cracked doorway to his media conversations, overseeing his correspondence into and out of the school. Puzzle pieces began to fall into place for Alayne—the times she'd visited Dorner and he'd sent Tarry on a sudden errand, the nervous glances he'd shot at the secretary's back when he'd welcomed Alayne to his office. Had he known that Tarry was an EA spy? Or had he only suspected? Had she sat within the executive office of Clayborne and conducted affairs of the EA all that time?

  A true wolf beneath a sheep's fleece.

  Other students had begun to stir; the rigid silence relaxed into peaceful rustling as the group sought their rest. Most chose to lie on the ground, finding what cushion they could with dead leaves, branches, and rocks. Soft snores already floated through the air.

  “Ready to go?” Daymon crouched quietly next to Alayne.

  Alayne stood. “Let's go.”

  No one made any comments as they moved to the fringes of the camp, although Bryce flicked a pebble at Daymon and hit him in the back.

  Irritation lit Alayne's voice. “Bryce, you nitwit—”

  “Just leave it.” Daymon grasped Alayne's arm and urged her into the deeper shadows of the woods. He led the way down a root-strewn path back toward the outcropping they had visited earlier that day. The lights of the city shone across the valley, illuminating every building with a brilliant glow. It was breathtaking.

  Alayne stopped to take it in. The High Court drew her gaze, its marble pillars bathed in soft hues of pink, yellow, blue, and green, the focal point of the Capital.

  “Let's head down that way,” Daymon pointed to the left. “It looks less steep.” Alayne nodded and started that way, but Daymon laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. “And Layne, if I tell you to run, do me a favor and actually pay attention to what I say. For once, please?”

  Alayne lifted an eyebrow. “I always pay attention to what you say.”

  Daymon snorted.

  “Also,” Alayne continued, glaring at Daymon, “are you going to let Bryce keep treating you like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “The kid just threw a rock at you.”

  Daymon rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and it hurt real bad, too. Almost didn't make it out of there. Layne, he's a pest. He does what pests do—they irritate, but they don't cause any real damage. Want me to tell you who I think is capable of causing real damage?” He stared gravely at her, the moonlight sharpening the planes of his face and glinting off of his dark hair.

  “Kyle?”

  Daymon said nothing, but a muscle jumped in his jaw.

  “I know, Daymon. I'm trying to figure out what to do. We're here at the Capital, and I'm going to assume that at some point while we're here, he's going to try to contact his dad. We need to keep a careful eye on him when we head into the city; maybe we can follow him and figure out what messages he's sending, or we can sabotage his dad's friendship with Leader Blankenship or something. I don't know, but surely he'll give something away while he's here.”

  Daymon jerked his shoulders. “Not necessarily. But that's beside the point. When are you going to confront him? For what he did to you?”

  “I don't know. I haven't decided yet. If I confront him now, we'll lose any opportunity to spy out what he does. I hoped to be able to give the Last Order more information than what we've got—when we make contact with your uncle.”

  Daymon ran his fingers through his hair. “It works both ways, Layne. We could be spying him out, and he could be turning us in. Are you really ready to walk through the streets of the Capital with him walking beside you? Aren't you a tiny bit concerned what he might do?”

  Alayne opened her mouth to reply, but shut it again. He was right. Kyle could cause more trouble for them than they would for him. All it would take would be one shout, one sprint to the right people, and their entire group would be prisoners of the Elemental Alliance.

  Tears pricked Alayne's eyes. She hated that she even had to consider Kyle in this light. He had been her friend. That was the least that he had been. She shuddered at the shaft of betrayal that pierced her as she thought of his tentative kisses, his admissions of love, even his marriage proposal. She'd never returned that love, but she might have, given enough time. He'd claimed to be willing to wait until she had healed from Jayme's death; he'd claimed a lot of things that had shattered to nothingness when she'd overheard his own admission to his mother, Beatrice Pence, that he was spying on Alayne.

  Alayne closed her eyes, her fists gripping her shirt in white-knuckled anger. “Did he think he would get away with it?” The razor-sharp blade of Kyle's dishonesty rankled in her back. What else had he lied about? She sighed and opened her eyes. Daymon's look was guarded.

  A branch cracked behind them, and they both jerked to face the treeline. Daymon bounded into the woods. Alayne could hear his footsteps jogging through the dead leaves.

  After a few minutes, he reappeared, glancing uneasily over his shoulder. “I couldn't find anything. In these woods, it could have been an opossum or a raccoon. Still, to be safe, we'd better finish our scouting quickly.”

  Alayne nodded, following Daymon as he stepped carefully down the steep hillside. Years' accumulation of dead leaves and mulch made the slope slippery, and Alayne muttered dour words as she scrambled for roots and small trees to grasp. Her foot nudged loose pebbles, sending them cascading past Daymon into the darkness and earning a curse. “Nice, Alayne, did you send them an RSVP, too?”

  “My foot slipped.”

  “Next time, slip more quietly.”

  Alayne glared at the back of his head as he worked his way down. “This would be so much easier if we could bend the elements.”

  Daymon stopped at the base of the hill. He crouched behind a tree and motioned to Alayne to join him. “Ain't gonna happen,” he said. “Look. The place is crawling with Elemental Alliance soldiers. It's their base.”

  In front of them, in the center of an open field on the outside of the Capital's walls, an enormous, fenced-off compound buzzed with light and activity. Huge buildings lay inside the fencing, airbuses and shuttles lined portions of the barbed wire. Several of them moved back and forth across the compound, some lining up at the gate to exit past the guards.

  The gates towered above the barbed wire, and spotlights blazed down across the entire opening. A dirt road meandered outward from the compound, and airbuses moved to full speed along it as soon as the guards waved them through. Towers dotted the compound; black-silhouetted EA soldiers paced the platforms.

  “Skies!” Alayne breathed. “We're going to have to take another day to circle the Capital and come in from the other side.”

  “No good.” Daymon shook his head and pointed. “See those lights there? And there and there?”

  Alayne strained her eyes in the direction Daymon indicated. Sure enough, light blazed in the distance beyond the walls of the Capital, cementing her fear. There was more than one EA base.

  “How many altogether, do you think?” she asked.

  “From the lights, I'm going to guess four, but we won't know until we either see it for ourselves, or somehow get past the bases into the Capital and ask my uncle.”

  “And we don't even know for sure that he's there.”

  “He's there.” Daymon nodded confidently. “He was there the morning of Clayborne's exams because I received media communications from him, and if he'd have moved, he would have gotten word to me somehow.”

  “In the middle of running for our lives?”

  “He's resourceful.” But Daymon's frown betrayed his uncertainty.

  Alayne wiped her damp palms on her jeans, glancing at the pants with distaste. They had been what she had worn the morning of her flight from Clayborne, and despite the heavy material, they showed the evidence of constant movement. The Earth-Mo
vers had kept everyone's clothes mostly free of dirt, but the lack of filth didn't keep holes from ripping in the knees. The hems at her ankles had separated from the rest of the jeans, and another hole had opened up along the seam near her knee. Her shoes, she'd lost during the exams, but one of the scouts had stolen a pair of boots for her from a farmhouse. They were heavier than she liked, and the right one rubbed her small toe too much, but they did spare the pads of her feet from rocks and twigs.

  Alayne and Daymon watched the busy scene for a while until Daymon touched Alayne's hand. “We should get back.”

  The return trip up the slope was harder, but at last, they reached the camp without alerting the EA soldiers to their presence and without waking anyone.

  Alayne's mind whirled with possibilities, but the troubling reality refused to budge: how were they to enter the Capital without being noticed? Twenty-four of them?

  Twenty-four. The magic number flashed across every MIU across the Continent. Twenty-four Clayborne students gone rogue.

  Alayne sank down onto her makeshift bed, worming into the branches and leaves until she felt remotely comfortable. Daymon lay next to her, pulling a stone close to his head to use as a pillow. Alayne eyed him as he lay on his side, facing her.

  “You should use leaves for your pillow. They're softer.”

  Daymon grunted. “Can't hear as well when my ear is buried in them.”

  “But you can hear with your ear pressed again solid stone?”

  “Well enough.” A corner of his mouth curled upward as his fingertips brushed across her cheek.

  The movement was as natural as breathing, and Alayne felt strangely comforted by it. “'Night, Daymon.”

  “Get some sleep, Layne.”

  A wave of exhaustion swept over Alayne; her eyelids grew weighted. She fought sleep, wanting to stay awake and help Daymon keep watch over the group, feeling a lurking sense of danger, but she couldn't push sleep away. She blinked, and the last thing she saw before her lids closed for the night were Daymon's watchful eyes shining in the moonlight.

  Alayne's dreams were troubled and strange. She dreamed of running, forever and ever, but in spite of all her effort, she gained no ground. Something was behind her, something that terrified her.

  In the morning, Daymon was asleep and Kyle was gone.

  Chapter 3

  “I'll kill him myself. How could he!” Marysa fumed as she paced the ground in front of Alayne, hands on her hips, her face flushed with anger. “Layne, why didn't you tell us? Who knows what he might have been picking up from us because we didn't know any better than to watch our mouths when he was around.”

  Alayne grimaced. “You wouldn't be saying anything he didn't already know. He knows everything so far.” She glanced at Daymon, who sat on a fallen log, sharpening a wicked-looking dagger. Almost everything. Thus far, she'd only spoken with Daymon about how the Vale had taken control of her the last time she'd used it, but the others couldn't have helped but notice. She wondered if they thought she'd destroyed the EA platoon on purpose, and she shifted uneasily. “He knew that we were coming here to find Manders, and I guess he was hoping if he could stick it out long enough, we might lead him straight to the heart of the Last Order.”

  “We had hoped to do just that,” Daymon added, blowing carefully on his knife's blade. “If we could have gotten him inside of the Last Order's headquarters, my uncle could have gained a lot of information from him about the Elemental Alliance.” Regret tinged his words.

  Rachyl pushed her hair behind her head and roped it into a knot with some twine. “That would have been risky, though. We're thinking to enter a city crawling with Alliance, and loads of people will know who he is—particularly since all twenty-four of us are all over the media outlets. He would be well-known as Beatrice Pence's son—”

  “Whereas you're not known as the Leader's niece?” Marysa asked, shaking her head. “He wouldn't necessarily have stood out.”

  “My uncle isn't a figurehead of the Elemental Alliance, as Petyr and Beatrice Pence are, that's all I'm saying,” Rachyl defended herself. “Anyway, why didn't Kyle stay with us, then? If we're this close, what would have made him give away his position?”

  “He would have only left if his cover was blown.” Alayne's gaze lifted from Daymon's knife to his eyes. “Last night when we scouted, we heard—”

  “Yep.” Daymon slid his knife into its sheath. “That's the only thing that makes sense. He overheard us talking about him, knows that we know who he is, so there was no point in pretending anymore. The little buzzard's headed into the Capital.” A slow smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “Which makes our entrance much easier. I wasn't sure how we were going to get in before, but now I know.”

  Alayne's eyebrows arched. “What's your plan?”

  Daymon smiled mysteriously. “You'll see.” He rose and slung a belt and sheath at Alayne.

  Surprised, she caught it and held it up. “What's this?”

  “A sheath for your black steel knife,” he explained as he stepped over the log, heading for an outcropping. “Your blade's just about through your belt-loop.”

  Alayne glanced down at the black steel knife on her belt-loop. It hung by a thread. With a grimace, she slid the blade into the leather sheath where it nestled as if the hide had been stretched to fit it. She traced the belt, the laces that threaded through the carefully punctured leather, realizing with a start that Daymon's craftmanship lay in her hands. He made this for me. Her mouth softened as she glanced up at Daymon's disappearing back. Without another second's hesitation, she wrapped the belt around her waist and knotted it, enjoying the weight of the black steel knife where it hung on her hip.

  Alayne crouched on the balls of her feet, hidden in the treeline, taking in the scene. The crowds of people hovering near the gate of the Capital already looked hot and thirsty. With the sun had come a wave of heat, and tempers flared as vendors disputed prices with customers, babies squalled, and boys yelled as they ran races along the dusty stretch of road in front of the City Centre.

  Elemental Alliance airbuses passed in and out of the gates, each one packed with uniformed EA soldiers. When each bus arrived at the gate, the guards would run in front of the vehicle, pushing people out of the way as the airbus nosed through.

  Daymon nudged Alayne with his elbow. “I'll be right back. Keep everyone in the trees until I get here.”

  Alayne nodded. The students had spread out, most of them watching the commotion with envy. It had been so long since they'd had interaction with anyone but themselves—eking out an existence as they'd fled across the miles from Clayborne over plains, thorough burrows and woods, only gleaning outside information in spied-out snippets from passing rural farms and villages—and the food in the market stalls was certainly something they had lacked for the last several weeks.

  “Watermelon.” Marysa pointed. “And cantaloupe. Excuse me while I sop up a drool puddle. Alayne, dearest Water-Wielder, want to give me a hand?” She opened her mouth and pointed inside, waiting.

  Alayne laughed. “I'm drooling, too. Maybe Manders'll have access to melons, and there'll be some waiting for us.”

  Daymon winked at Alayne. “Wish me luck,” he said.

  “Good luck,” she replied, “but I wish I knew what you're going to do.”

  “You'll see.” He strode downhill, cutting through the underbrush, boldly leaving the treeline and stepping out into the open, blending almost immediately with the jostling crowds. Alayne tried to keep him in sight, but as he took a few quick turns in the press of the people, she lost him.

  Thirty minutes had passed, and Alayne started to fidget. Soon enough, she promised herself as she tapped against the bark of a nearby spruce. Daymon hadn't said how long he'd be gone. Thirty minutes was too long, wasn't it? Should she try to follow him into the city? That would mean leaving the rest of the group by themselves. Not to mention she had no idea where he'd gone.

  “He hasn't been gone all that long, Layne,” Rach
yl murmured from behind her.

  Alayne glanced at the girl. “It feels like a long time.”

  “True. But you have to give him time to do what he needs to do.”

  “I wish he'd told me what that was.”

  “I do, too,” Rachyl said. “But there's no point in getting uneasy yet.”

  Alayne bit her lip and peered through the treeline again and then back into the woods where the students had sorted themselves into small groups of two or three. All of them seemed to be growing restless, but particularly Bryce Marshall. She still hadn't forgiven him for coughing at the most inopportune time when the platoon of EA soldiers had stumbled over their camp. She hoped he hadn't done it on purpose—would he really endanger himself like that?—but how could she be sure?

  He'd turned his back on the scene at the gates and was wandering in circles with his hands in his pockets. His long brown hair hung in his pale face. He caught her eye and yanked a hand out of his pocket, making a rude gesture.

  Alayne scowled at him. “What is his problem—”

  “Hey.” Daymon's whisper sounded behind Alayne.

  She jumped and whirled to face him, her hand over her heart. “Daymon, you scared me!” All at once, it sank in what he wore as he stood before her, outfitted in the gray-green uniform of an Elemental Alliance officer, the badge glinting off his chest. She stumbled back a step, steadying herself when he caught her upper arm. “What in CommonEarth—”

  His dimple winked. “I know you're thrilled to see me, but save your raptures for later. We need to line everybody up two by two.”

  Alayne stared at him. “Care to explain?”

  He shook his head. “Not now. We don't have much time, and I didn't leave a lot of margin for error.”