by C. R. Grey
“Take off the mask,” she said.
With a creak of the metal door, the boy-guard entered the cell and forced the wretched man to his knees. Viviana trembled. Our father would not have wished for you to be so unkind to me, she thought, practicing the speech she’d made to her mirror since the Progress Fair. For this, you must be punished.
She licked her lips without realizing it and strained forward against the bars as the guard lifted the bag off of the man’s head.
“Here he is,” the guard said, brandishing the bag proudly and gesturing to the man.
Viviana’s heart fell. She searched this man’s face but did not see her father’s eyes, or the ridiculous mustache worn by her brother at the Fair. The man kneeling in the cell had a round, wide nose and eyes of muddy, indistinct brown.
“I never said I was no one!” the man yelled in an accent that placed him as a gutter ant of the Gudgeons, and not the man who’d so calmly, so nobly, spoken to her at the Progress Fair.
“You idiot,” she said to the guard. She marched into the cell and grabbed the bag away from him. “Anyone can see this isn’t the man.”
“He was caught in Gribber Street, my lady, telling a crowd that he was the True King,” the guard said. “Just saying it is reason enough to arrest him.”
“You’re wasting my time!” she shouted. All the delicious anticipation she’d felt now became fury. “There are dozens—hundreds!—of creatures like him claiming to be the True King. Will you arrest all of them and let the one who dared to threaten me go free?”
She tossed the bag at the kneeling man. It hit him in the face, and he winced.
“What should I do with him, then?” asked the guard as Viviana took her leave of the cell.
“Send him to the quarries with the rest of them,” she said. “Do I need to figure everything out for you?”
As she marched out of the dungeons, the older guard called to her.
“M’lady,” he said.
She spun around, furious. “And don’t waste my time any further.”
He flinched, just barely, and it pleased her to see it. “Of course, m’lady.” He bowed his head. “There are rumors that the man you seek—the imposter from the Fair—is a professor at Fairmount.”
Viviana felt a flame dance inside her chest. Of course—she remembered the boy, how even then his genius shone through in the intricate towers he’d construct from mere wooden blocks. It would make sense to pursue academia. “Then see if these rumors are true,” she told the guard. “If it is so, you’ll have a special place in my cabinet.”
The man smiled, which irritated her. She’d done enough good deeds for the day and wished to find another victim on which to inflict her venom, so she headed toward the cluster of tents in the man-made valley of the quarry. She walked down the slope slowly, so as not to slip on loose rock. At the first tent, she yanked open the fabric flap that protected the people inside from the black soot that had gathered on everything.
“Clarke!” she called to the wretched figure huddled over a worktable. “You’ll be happy to hear that the black stone is working quite well—so well, in fact, that I may consider feeding you this week.”
In response, Clarke did not look up. “Yes, my queen,” he mumbled softly. In the shadows, a metal pony with red eyes reflected the low light of the one overhead bulb.
“Exactly what I want to hear,” Viviana purred. “Good work indeed.”
TREMELO’S HANDS WERE BOUND by a strong rope, and he was tethered to a strange man. He was being held prisoner, led up a mountain and farther away from Fairmount—away from his urgent research against Dominance, and away from Fennel. The way her curious mind turned when it came upon a unique smell or an unfamiliar sound would have served him well right now. He hoped she hadn’t gotten sick with worry. Tremelo needed her facilities sharp if she was to track him. Because Nature knew, his were not. He hadn’t realized just how unfit he was until he had to climb up a mountainside with his hands bound, and only a sip of water through a potato sack every hour. His throat was parched, and he was dizzy from exhaustion.
“My good man, at the risk of sounding whiney I must ask: Are we there yet?” Tremelo didn’t know where “there” was; his kidnapper hadn’t given him much to go on.
“The queen forbids you to know anything further,” he’d said, not for the first time. In fact Tremelo had counted twenty-two times at this point.
“Of course. Well, I don’t suppose this bag atop my head could be removed?” Tremelo asked. It was humid with his breath. “While the people in the Gray consider themselves fashion forward, I really don’t think this suits me.”
“Funny,” the man’s gruff voice replied sarcastically.
“What’s funny is your absurd devotion to your queen,” he replied. “What is it, exactly, that she promised you?”
“Freedom from the bond, of course,” the kidnapper said, his voice tight. Tremelo imagined him saying it through gritted teeth, and couldn’t help but groan. People actually believed this drivel.
“Do not disrespect the queen,” the man continued, pulling hard on the rope so that Tremelo nearly fell forward. “She said—”
But something cut through the air, a small object whistling just passed Tremelo’s ear—and the rope was pulled taught before he heard the thud of something heavy hitting the ground.
Tremelo’s blood froze. He stood perfectly still, terrified—wondering who was out there and what had happened. He grabbed ahold of the rope that bound him and felt his way forward until he was crouched to the ground. It led to the waist of his captor’s body. He gave it a nudge. The man didn’t move.
Tremelo pulled the sack off and took in a breath of fresh air for the first time in days. His captor was a thin wire of a man, unconscious—or possibly dead. When he heard footsteps behind him he felt a jolt of electro-current up his spine. The silence stretched so long that he couldn’t take it anymore.
“I’ll have you know I’m adept at a far-west martial art,” he said, shakily. “I am well versed in pressure points and know how to kill a man in a dozen different ways.” It was a bluff, of course.
Whoever was behind him gave a snort. “I hope you’re not as bad a king as you are a liar,” he said. The voice was familiar, gruff but friendly.
Tremelo spun around and saw none other than Eneas. “Thank Nature!” Tremelo said, standing up to shake the man’s hand. “How did you find me?”
“I was tracking a group of Dominae spies up the eastern edge of the woods. I’d followed Miller into the Lowlands, but he was captured and I couldn’t save him.”
Tremelo sensed the hint of anger and regret in his voice. “Have you any word from the kids? Or anyone back in the tunnels? Digby?”
Eneas shook his head. “Things look bad. The tunnels were raided just after you were kidnapped. I know many of the Velyn and RATS escaped.”
Tremelo was devastated to hear the news. All those people—they’d survived Viviana’s Progress Fair just to be hunted like prey.
“Tremelo, the metal Miller spoke of…the Dominae are mining the Velyn mountains to find more of it. They’re uprooting our kin.”
“The metal,” Tremelo repeated. He’d had a theory that it was the same metal used in the Reckoning, stitched into the heart of the metal tiger at the Progress Fair. If he was right, it was black in its raw form and silver when refined. “Do you know what they’ll do with it?”
“My source doesn’t know. But they will tear apart the ground upon which Aldermere stands for more and more of it. They’ll mine all the way to the Underlands for all we know.”
The Underlands, the place of wild, ill repute beyond the kingdom. “Impossible.”
“The soil there is rich in iron ore. There have been rumors that there’s division in the Dominae ranks. Some of them are still too scared to travel there, while Viviana will likely claim that as part of her kingdom too. Yet the Underlands already has a queen….”
Tremelo looked at Eneas curiously.
“Another queen?” he asked. “This isn’t another Velyn fairy tale, is it?”
“A fairy tale?” Eneas said, his jaw set and his eyes hard. Tremelo knew immediately he’d said the wrong thing. Eneas turned his back and began to walk up the slope. “There’s still much more for you to learn, my king. A battle awaits,” he called behind him.
“FAIRMOUNT?” GWEN ASKED IN disbelief. “But that’s only a day’s ride from the Gray.”
“How’s that the edge of the kingdom?” Hal asked.
“The prophecy…could we have read it wrong?” Gwen said.
She looked to Tori, who held the book open in her arms as Gwen fished the Seers’ Glass out of her pocket and put it to the page. “‘Sunken deep at the kingdom’s edge, watched by a wise and dusty army,’” Gwen said before reading the rest. “But we can’t go back to Fairmount. The whole reason we left was to escape Viviana after the Progress Fair!” Though she couldn’t admit to the group that she wasn’t too eager to head back in Tremelo’s general direction, either. In her vision, she’d seen the True King hurt her friend, and she’d do anything in her power to stop it.
The Tully shook her head. “The book you read from is much older than any of you. A long time ago, it was Fairmount that was known to be the edge of the kingdom. It was just past the cliffs where they built it, in the very spot of woods considered to be the entrance to the Underlands.”
The kids were quiet for a moment. The Underlands were rarely spoken of.
“We came all this way because I read the prophecy wrong,” Phi said, breaking the silence. “This is my fault.”
“This is no one’s fault!” Bailey said forcefully. “If we hadn’t come here we wouldn’t have met Annika, the Tully, Lukas—any of these people.” He pointed around at the women and children who’d been with them on the ships and been held hostage by the Dominae. “And anyway we’re supposed to be raising an army, and we’re sure as Nature not going to find it at school.”
Lukas had stood up a little straighter at the sound of his name. “He’s right!” the boy exclaimed. “Now we’re part of your army.”
Phi smiled a bit, and Gwen was glad Bailey had said what he did. She reached out to touch Phi’s arm, but the other girl flinched and pulled back. She was about to ask what was wrong when the Tully’s gentle voice pulled her attention away.
“Hold on, little lizard,” the Tully said, her hand on his shoulder. “It’s not so simple.”
Annika’s brow furrowed. She and the Tully shared a look. Myra and the others had already pledged to join their army, but the two women Gwen had come to trust most still hadn’t decided.
The Tully nodded to Annika, as if the two had communicated something in that one look. “Lukas,” she said, getting down on one knee, “Mum has to go with our new friends, but you and I are going to stay here.”
The little boy spun around and looked up at Annika. His face had crumpled, and he looked on the verge of tears.
“I’ll be back before you know it, little lizard,” Annika said. She lifted the boy off the ground and hugged him close, and he somehow managed not to cry. Gwen looked away. She remembered the urgency with which she and the Elder left Parliament, the night when this all started. War was a horrible thing.
“We’ll have to leave immediately,” Annika said to the Tully.
Bailey looked at the rest of them. “What do you think? If we head back toward Fairmount, maybe we can find Tremelo in the tunnels?”
“No!” Gwen blurted out, though she couldn’t very well tell them why. “I mean…” Everyone looked at her expectantly, but Gwen felt torn. She wanted to argue. She wanted the deaths to end, and if that meant keeping Bailey away from Tremelo, then she’d have to speak up. But before she could, Phi did.
“I’m staying here,” her friend said. They turned to look at Phi. Carin was perched on her shoulder, and it was the first time Gwen realized how badly her wing was damaged. There was a gash through it, feathers lost around the wound and blood dripping down.
“I can carry Carin,” Bailey said, a note of desperation to his voice. “We can’t go without you!”
“You have to,” she said as she pulled her cloak back to reveal deep gashes across her side. Claw marks. Her clothes were wet with blood, and she stumbled back—as if it had been an effort to stand straight this entire time. Tori was to her left, and caught her first. “It was while the vulture was fighting with Carin….”
Gwen and Bailey rushed to either side of her, with Hal looking over their shoulders.
“Oh Nature!” Gwen whispered. “We can’t leave you here by yourself!”
“She won’t be by herself,” the Tully said. “Lukas and I are staying, and lots of the other women and children. I have some pastes and creams that could relieve the pain and quicken the healing.”
Tori grabbed Phi’s hands. “I can stay,” she said. Gwen remembered that they’d been roommates, and they’d spent the first part of the school year looking out for each other. Gwen suppressed a sliver of jealousy; she’d never had school friends. She’d never been in school.
“They need you,” Phi said as she shook her head.
“Not as much as you do,” Tori said. Gwen could see the worry behind her eyes. “Bailey is some prophesized Child of War, and Gwen is a Seer. And Hal and his bats would be good to have in the woods. They can handle this without me….”
“No,” Phi said. “The fight needs you. It needs all of you. And it needs me too. When I’m better.”
This sparked a series of protestations where everyone spoke over one another. Hal argued Tori’s snakes would be better assets during their travel; Bailey insisted they delay their trip; Tori pointed out that she was considering studying medicine and she could be of help.
“You must trust that she knows what’s best for her,” the Tully said over their voices.
They all quieted then, though Gwen hadn’t spoken the entire time. Her head was spinning. She didn’t want to leave Phi here. But if Bailey went to Fairmount without her, how could she protect him from her vision coming true? What if Tremelo was there, or they ran into him along the way?
“We’ll respect your decision,” Gwen said, her voice choked with grief. “I don’t want to leave you, but the kingdom…”
“Go, you guys,” Phi said. “Carin and I will be fine.”
“Hard decisions are made in times of war,” Annika said. She kissed Lukas on his dark hair and put him down. “Gather your things, everyone.”
Sailing a conspicuously odd land ship back to the Lowlands did not seem, to Bailey or any of his friends, to be a good idea. Annika, thankfully, had provided transport. To help them cross the southern Plains, Myra provided them with three-wheeled contraptions, similar to motorbikes, and just as rusty and rickety as anything they might once have found in Tremelo’s shop.
“I’m sorry they’re not road-hardier,” Myra had said when presenting them. “Or that I don’t have enough for all of you.” She and any other able-bodied women planned to meet them at Fairmount, after they’d had enough time to rebond with their kin.
“That’s all right,” said Hal. “We can share, right, Tori?”
“Only if I’m driving,” Tori had said.
After two days of driving, with Taleth running alongside them, the sand dunes they passed had transformed into dry plains, and then to the snow-covered but rich earth of the farm-dotted Lowlands. They pushed on into the Dark Woods, skirting north of the mountains, and camped underneath the safety of a thorny thicket.
Gwen stared into the small fire Tori was starting, lost in her thoughts. Taleth padded behind her, brushing against Gwen affectionately as she passed—then landed with a huff on top of a bed of damp leaves nearby. Bailey arranged his coat around himself and burrowed next to his kin for warmth.
“Are you all right?” Bailey asked. It was hard for Gwen to look at him, to see the goodness of the bond at work. She wasn’t sure how to answer. “I know it was hard to leave Phi behind.”
Gwen ran
her fingers through her hair, twisting one short lock until it was taut as a wound spring. “I miss her. I miss the owls too.” She hadn’t seen one owl since they left the Gray, and she missed the way their simple presence filled her heart. But it was more than that. It was the harrowing vision that flashed in her mind, and the feeling of absolute helplessness that she wouldn’t be able to stop it. “Everything feels so out of control.” She squeezed her eyes shut, blinking out a single tear. How could she save Bailey if she couldn’t even keep herself from crying?
“Hey,” he said. “We’re going to put together an army. We’re going to make sure Tremelo gets his kingdom back.”
The king’s name made her shudder. “And what if we don’t?” she asked. “What if he doesn’t take the throne?”
Tori looked back at her curiously. She was crouched by the fire, fanning the small flames.
“We’re not going to let Viviana win!” Bailey said. He seemed like he was trying to reassure himself as much as Gwen.
She nodded in response. She couldn’t keep this conversation up any longer, and she felt traitorous. Even surrounded by friends and even with the newfound knowledge that she was a Seer, she was totally adrift—orphaned again just as she was as a child wandering through the Gudgeons.
Could she change the future? She thought of Tremelo’s adopted father, Thelonious Loren. They called him the Loon because he’d written down the prophecies of the Seers, because he’d believed them. But Gwen didn’t want her own prophecies to come true. She wanted to prevent them. She wanted to fight.
The Dark Woods proved too thick to drive through quickly; they drove at a snail’s pace, camping at night under the cover of low, camouflaging branches. Taleth left them for hours at a time to hunt for her own food, while Tori and Hal took charge of scavenging edible greens and winter nuts from the surrounding thickets. Hal’s upbringing with his apothecary uncle had resulted in a keen eye for which plants were safe to eat, and which would cause hours of stomachaches, or worse. They slept in shifts, huddled together for warmth.
