The others dropped into the tunnel, and I was clambering down to sit and grab for the far edge when Ronan made an odd sound in his throat.
“Andriana!” Vidar cried at the same time, staring up at me with urgency, hand atop his armband.
I glanced up and down the street, and what I saw kept me from looking away. The Sheolite tracker — the elite one from Nem Post — stood fifty paces away. The man spread his feet wide and faced us, delight etching his cruelly handsome features as his red cape stilled behind him. “The high gifts have long been forbidden,” he cried. “You are under arrest!”
“We do not answer to you,” Ronan said, striding toward him, drawing a sword from his back.
“You will. We rule these lands, Ailith.” He raised his arms to his waist, his fingers crag-like, and pointed to us as he opened his mouth.
What emerged were the makings of nightmares. Such a high-pitched wail, so full of pure agony, that I covered my ears and hunched forward, gasping, almost falling into the tunnel. It felt like he was slicing my eardrums with his call, stealing my very thought, my ability to think by inserting pain, sheer pain. Death. Despair. Loss. Fear.
From the corner of my eye I saw Ronan drive toward the tracker.
The tracker ceased his hellish call and pulled out an odd weapon — a double-tipped sword with a handle in the middle. He slid one foot outward and raised it parallel to the ground, preparing for my knight’s attack as if he had all the time he needed.
Ronan screamed, yelling at me to go, I thought, but it was as if I’d been deafened by the scream and I heard him from far away, as if his scream was but a whisper. He drew one of his swords from the back, followed closely by the other.
I looked down, and Niero was there beside Vidar, both desperately gesturing for me to jump. “Now,” Niero’s mouth formed, every line in his face demanding obedience. “Now.”
In a daze I took the far edge, and allowed one last glance at my knight — who was now striking the tracker while the Sheolite turned in a swirling wave of blood-red cloth — and did as I knew Ronan wished. Get to the others. Find relative safety. I eased down, the floor farther down than I anticipated, then dropped. Niero caught me, turned me to his side, then gripped my hand and ran down the tunnel, toward one side of the mucky stream. As much as I couldn’t seem to hear, my sense of smell seemed unfortunately whole.
We’d done our business in a small hut outside our home, as others did in the village. Even as they did at Nem Post. But here in the city, it seemed that everyone’s most private business ended up in the sewer tunnels.
These were the dim, distant thoughts I had as Niero dragged me forward, following Vidar and Bellona. It was better than my desperate wonderings over Ronan, and how he might catch up once he dispatched the tracker.
If he dispatched the tracker.
I preferred thoughts of sewage here, and where it would ultimately go.
The farther we got from the battle, the more my hearing returned, and the more the cuff at my arm warmed me again, even against the chill of the underground tunnel.
“This way,” Niero urged when I hesitated, looking back. “Ronan will follow.” He pulled me onward and I reluctantly followed.
At a Y in the tunnels, we turned right, rushing forward. And at the end we spied two men, standing beneath the pointed ends of a raised grate, light cascading down around their shoulders, swords in their hands. Vidar slowed, Bellona with him. Niero and I stopped behind him.
“We have nothing to fear from them,” Vidar breathed, a slow smile spreading across his face. “They are like kin to us.”
“Subversives, here in the bowels of this wretched city,” Niero whispered in wonder. “The Maker be praised.” He stepped between Vidar and Bellona and went to the men, while I hesitated, staring down the long, silent tunnel behind us. Ronan still wasn’t coming. And if the tracker found us here, could these two stop him? They’d clearly once been fearsome. But now they were of six decades and frail unto the point of death. Bent. Thin. With gray beards.
“I am Raniero. Of the Valley,” said our leader, offering his arm.
“Raniero of the Valley,” said the longer-bearded one on the left, as if that answered some long-asked question in his mind. He accepted Niero’s arm and glanced at his companion, then back to our leader. “I am Clennan. And this is Tyree.”
“We are searching for one of our own, brother,” Niero said. “A healer.”
Clennan’s lips clamped shut and he stared hard at Niero, searching his face.
“Our elders sent us here, for we are to free her of this loathsome place.”
Tyree shared a grim look with Clennan.
“You are too late,” Clennan said. “Tressa was taken from us a week ago. Arrested for trying to purchase medicine, but mostly for being unregistered and unmated.”
Raniero frowned. “Did they discover her high gifting?”
Clennan’s eyelids, hooded with age and sorrow, lowered further. “I don’t believe so. But her crimes are already enough to send her to the gallows at sunrise.”
“Oh, that won’t work,” Vidar muttered with a soft, mirthless laugh, grimly crossing his arms. “That won’t work at all.”
I didn’t laugh with him. I was thinking about how the scouts had come to the Valley. Anticipated our bait tactic in the forest. Then the tracker’s arrival at Nem Post. Had Tressa betrayed us, as well as those in the Citadel? Told them of our ways? Our training?
“Come,” said the man, looking over his shoulder and into the dark tunnel. “You shall be safe ahead. We’ll speak further there.” He turned and we followed, running a bit to catch up with his surprisingly long, strong strides.
“There is a tracker behind us. A Sheolite,” Niero said, glancing backward.
Clennan faltered and appeared shaken. He reached out and wrapped spidery fingers around Niero’s arm. “You led him here? To us?”
“It was not our intent. He found us only as we slipped below the streets. He’s one of the elite. Do you understand what that means?”
The man nodded gravely, took a deep breath to gather himself, and continued walking. “Sethos. It has to be. He’s sought us for years and has come close to Tressa, sensing her gifting. But we taught her how to evade him.” His brow furrowed and his pace seemed to increase. I hurried behind him, thinking over his words. He spoke as an elder. Like one of those in Community. “At least we’ll have the night to make plans,” he said. “He won’t get past the grate ahead.”
But then neither would Ronan. The thought of him separate from us, alone for the night in this horrible city, terrified me more than this temporary separation. “B-but our man. A knight,” I sputtered. “He was fighting the tracker. Defending us.” Defending me. “We need him with us.”
“He’d best hurry,” Tyree said with concern, still walking. “We are directly below the city gates here. When the sun sets and they close the entry, this metal grate comes down here as well, sealing the sewer tunnel.”
I glanced up to where he pointed — at the rusted, pointed ends of the heavy grate. “You cannot,” I said, reaching out for his thin arm. “You cannot shut it! Shut it against the tracker if he comes, but not our man!”
“It is out of our hands,” Clennan answered, gesturing upward as Tyree had. “They determine the moment. You either remain on this side” — he looked up to a slice in the stone above us — “and wait for your knight. Or you come to this side,” he said, taking a step past a groove in the floor, “and we shall tell you all that we know of our Tressa.”
“Just do not stand directly beneath it,” said Tyree, stepping quickly to the other side. “It’s killed many a rat.”
We heard the city bells that signaled sunset. It was happening.
I stared into the depths of the dark tunnel and willed Ronan to arrive. Ronan, come on!
Niero took both of my arms in his strong, gentle hands and drew me slowly backward. To the other side as the bells continued to toll.
“No,”
I said, wrenching away. “Didn’t you say we were to stay together?”
“Ronan is a knight. He shall find his way to us, if he yet lives. Stay focused. A fellow Remnant is sentenced to death. We must get to her, Andriana. We need her. It is the Call.”
I stared at him in horror, his words rolling through my mind again and again. “If he yet lives?” I said, disliking the screech in my own voice. The panic.
The bells ceased and yet continued to echo down our tunnel. “Ronan! Ronan, run!” I screamed.
“Andriana!” Niero growled. “Be quiet!” He grabbed hold of my arms again, facing me this time, and dragged me to the wall on the far side of the slot. I stared at the ceiling, scared that the grate would come crashing down at any moment. But Niero was shaking me, bumping my back up against the cold stone, making me focus on him. “You are forgetting yourself, Remnant. Forgetting yourself! Listen to me. We have one Call. Nothing can get in the way of it. Nothing!”
“It has begun?” whispered one of the tunnel dwellers in awe, Clennan. He fell to his knees. “You are also of the foretold?”
His companion dropped to his knees too, ignoring the muck. Both raised their hands in prayer, lifting their faces to the sliver of setting sun that streamed through the crack of pavement above, and invoking the name of the Maker.
My inward spinning came to an abrupt halt, a draining whirlpool, now a cistern. Tears welled and streamed down my face as they continued to pray, their words and tone like a song in my heart, bringing to mind the elders at the Citadel surrounding us, and the beauty and intensity of the presence of the Maker. Reminding me of our own Call.
But then we heard the thunk of the gates come together above us and then the metallic slide of a second beside us. Dense and heavy, it began slowly descending and gained speed until it slammed into a slot in the floor, sealing Ronan off.
Separating us.
I felt it as keenly as if a knife had been shoved into my belly. Ronan, Ronan, where are you?
I pushed Niero away, and he let me go. I hurriedly rubbed my wet cheeks and eyes with the backs of my hands as I tried to think, then rushed back to the grate, wrapping my fingers around the cold, rusted steel. How to get to him, how to get to him … I stared into the gathering abyss of the tunnel, listening hard, but no sounds of footsteps came our way. Was it possible? Had the tracker killed him?
But if that were so, wouldn’t the tracker be in pursuit himself, even now showing his face again?
Or had they each accomplished their task and killed the other?
My eyes strained in the low light, hoping I’d see him coming, hear him coming.
“Andriana,” Niero said, placing his big hands on my shoulders. His tone again was gentle, assuring, even if weary. “Ronan shall find his way back to us. It shall take more than one Sheolite to bring down your knight.”
“But he wasn’t just any tracker, Niero. He opened his mouth and let out such a shriek — ” My voice broke and I brought a hand to my chest. “It was the sound of the dead and damned.”
“This is why the elders brought you Ronan,” he said. “He can defend you when our enemies prey upon your gifting. He is strong where you are weak. He is your shield. Trust the Maker. Wait and see.”
“What if he returns to the inn? Looking for us?”
“Then he will see that we did not return. He’ll come back to the tunnels tomorrow to search for us.”
I took steps I did not feel, my mind solely on Ronan’s eyes, his secretive smile, the way he’d looked at me that morning, his fingers in my hair. But as we walked, my vibrating armband forced my attention back to the present. To what was ahead. To the task.
As we entered a wide room, blessedly devoid of sewage, I felt the presence of the Maker as I had not since we left the sacred chamber within the Citadel. But the sensation made no sense to me, given who we’d found. The walls were lined with beds, four high, and on each one patients looked our way, or rose up on one elbow. Many cried out and groaned in monstrous pain.
And yet all managed to look upon us with favor. Welcome. Peace.
“They all have it?” Niero asked, turning in a slow circle. More than fifty men, women, and children lay around us. “The Cancer?”
Our guide nodded soberly, even as we instinctively drew a step back. All but Raniero. The old guardian considered him carefully. “Tressa cared for us here. For a long while her father worked for the office of health, and he knew who would be taken the next day. He managed to squire these to safety, and tended to them here with his daughter. Until — ” His voice broke. He wiped his nose with the side of a crooked finger and looked away.
“Until they suspected him as a subversive,” said the second man. “And killed him as they had her mother.”
“And you, brother?” Niero said. “You have the Cancer.”
“Had it. I seem to be on the mend,” he said, lifting frail hands.
“She healed you?” Vidar asked.
“She said the Maker healed me. As he heals us all, in this life or the next.”
“As is so,” Niero said with a dignified nod.
I wandered from one bank of beds to the next, wondering how a girl our age had managed to do all this. Each one had the essence of an Ailith, like they wore it as a perfume. From her touch? It was this that had drawn us, that made our armbands hum with recognition. I reached out and touched each hand that reached for me, though I was no healer. Did I have something yet that I could give them? Comfort, I decided, smiling into one face and then the next. “The Maker sees you. You are not alone,” I said, squeezing a small girl’s shoulder. “He shall see you to wholeness.”
She smiled, looking almost angelic herself, until pain contorted her tiny face and she cried out. Fear, I felt in her. Agony. Like tiny echoes of the tracker’s screech in my ear.
“In the next world, when we go to be with the Maker, there shall be no more pain,” I said, bending down to look into her eyes. “There will only be peace. Restoration.”
She nodded, weary tears in her eyes as she clung to my words. I forced myself to move on, past a man of perhaps four decades who almost vomited, he coughed so hard. Making me think of another I’d known until just past my first decade.
The Cancer had come in waves in our village and others among the Valley. It came in two forms: a twisting of gut or a siphoning of breath. Here, it seemed the same. But at home we’d done our best to see our people through it and on to the afterworld. Here in Zanzibar, they were cast out, sent into hiding or directly to their deaths. And yet in spite of our dedicated, loving care for those of our village afflicted by the Cancer, never had we seen one rise again, as Clennan and Tyree had. My hope soared, thinking of the good we could do, getting Tressa to others afflicted. How much more powerful could her gift become once she wore the Remnant arm cuff? Once she was one with us?
“Who is Tressa’s knight?” Niero asked the men. “A Remnant is not without a Knight of the Last Order. Who did the Maker raise up?”
“Killian,” said Clennan, glancing in sorrow from Tyree to Niero. “But he left when she was arrested and we haven’t seen him since. We fear the worst.”
“No,” Niero said, looking over to us. “We won’t believe that yet. We seek not one now, but three. Ronan. Tressa. And her knight.”
CHAPTER
6
The streets of Zanzibar grew fiercer at night, few but those with ill intentions out and about. But still we followed the guardians of the sick out and upward. We emerged through a disguised entrance in the back of an apartment — an entire wall that looked like our outhouse back home, except with crumbling plaster and stone. I tried not to think of anyone sitting there, seeing to their private business. But I had to admire the ingenuity; never in my life had I seen something so clever. Once it was in place, you’d never know it was an entrance to a hidden alcove for the healer to attend the sick.
Bellona and I had braided and tucked our hair again, preferring to disguise ourselves as men at this hour rather
than as wives. And it made us look, collectively, more fearsome, we decided, observing men coming our way electing to enter a nearby door or alley rather than pass our group of six.
When a patrol came toward us, we edged into a busy place called a pub, the men surrounding us as if we were only there to imbibe, taking shots of the clear, liquid fire they sold within. The men about us, long gone in their senses, smiled as we passed, waving at us as if we were old friends as they simultaneously ordered another small glass. They laughed boisterously and yet then were quick to take offense, clearly not in their right senses.
We slipped out behind the patrol after they’d passed, glad to know exactly where they were, rather than be surprised by another. But they led us directly to the eastern edge of the castle’s gates, toward the Lord of Zanzibar’s sprawling abode. We split from the patrol and clung to the gathering shadows, perused the wall climbing five stories above us. Our armbands began to warm and we shared a look. She was here.
“There,” said one of our elderly guides, gesturing upward in pain. He clutched a hand to his chest and leaned back against the wall that bordered Market Street. I understood then: he loved her as a daughter.
High above us, a woman in a simple white gown was chained, her arms spread wide. The clouds opened and it began to rain at last. Torches were set all about her, and in the sputtering light we could see she had dark red hair and ivory skin. With coloring like that, she must have been twice as challenging to hide in Zanzibar
I took a step forward and looked up, her presence calling to me, as ours did to her, apparently, for she looked down at us then back over her shoulder. I shivered, thinking about being where she was, so high up. I’d never liked heights. Try as he might, our trainer had never fully trained that fear out of me. If I were up there, on the edge of the wall … My stomach did an involuntary flip. “How are we to free her from such bonds?” I asked. Could I even manage to climb up there if I was on a mission?
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