by K A Riley
Cardyn says, “Nice.”
“Thanks. Now step aside.”
Cardyn does, and I kneel down and slip the talon into the lock. I push hard, and the blade wedges into the mechanism as I turn my wrist around hard.
To my surprise and relief, the lock makes a clunking sound, and the door clicks quietly open on the first try.
I brace myself for the surge of sword-wielding security guards or for a flurry of arrows, but nothing happens.
Before any of us can stop her, Rain slips inside, disappearing into the darkness.
Brohn, Cardyn, and I rush to get inside and catch up with her.
“This way,” Rain calls back, and we follow her, single file, down a long, carpeted corridor. It’s lit by imitation torches in brackets on the wall and lined with open, empty rooms on either side.
Even though we’ve never been in here before and have no idea how it’s laid out, Rain manages to lead us along with absolute confidence. Her Emergent abilities plus whatever she was able to glean from All-to-Pot’s drawing combine to make her the perfect person to follow into this enormous building.
We’re in total stealth mode now, walking briskly but staying light on our toes, crouched down, and hugging the walls as we go.
The ceilings are sky high, even in the hallways, and the sense of being out in the open like this—even though we’re inside—makes me feel like a prey animal, fully expecting to be pounced on and devoured at any second.
I’m still fully expecting to run into guards or even just regular kids living here, but so far, the corridors, stairways, and the open rooms we pass are all empty. Most of the rooms don’t even have furniture in them.
I consider trying to contact Render. He has excellent tracking, stealth, and survival skills. If I could tap into those, maybe I could help Rain get us to where we’re going. I’ve got my fingers hovering above my forearm tattoos, but at the last second, I decide against it. Partly because I’m having trouble focusing, partly because my head is still killing me from before, but mostly because I have a haunting feeling that activating the connection now might make me puke again or blackout or even push my brain over the edge into some potentially deadly hemorrhage.
I do my best to slow my breathing. Brohn gives me an “Are you okay?” look. I mouth, “Yes” and turn away before he can tell how much I’m sweating.
Still shuffling along, our shoulders to the walls, we approach an open doorway. Rain stops and inches her head into the room and then pulls back fast, her finger to her lips.
She looks in again and then urges us forward. In a crouch, we scramble past the room. As we go by, I sneak a quick peek inside.
The thick curtains are drawn over the fifteen-foot high windows, but enough of the day’s light is seeping in around the edges for me to take in some of the details. It looks like an old formal dining room of some kind with a chandelier hanging from the ceiling like an upside-down, crystal-leafed tree. There’s also a massive marble fireplace on either end. The room is set up with a row of brass-framed, pink canopied beds running straight down the middle.
Several of the beds are occupied with gently snoring kids, so I get why Rain rushed us along.
After that, Rain stays in the lead with Brohn behind her—his hand locked onto his arbalest to keep it from swinging and smashing against the walls—and with me and Cardyn following close on their heels.
Cardyn starts to whisper a question to me about where the rest of the people who live here might be, but I turn around and shush him with a finger to my lips before he gets a chance to finish.
He frowns at me, but at least he stops talking.
After a long and scary half-jog down a wide, open, and well-lit hallway, we arrive at what Rain tells us is the Audience Chamber.
“You’re sure?” Cardyn whispers as the four of us huddle just outside the doorway.
“Yes. As long as All-to-Pot’s memory is intact.” Rain’s voice is so low I can barely hear her.
As for All-to-Pot’s memory…she was nice enough, but I’m not sure I’m willing to stake our lives on her ability to remember the floorplan of this entire palace. Besides, who knows how much might have changed since she was in here last?
“Um,” Cardyn begins, but he doesn’t finish his thought.
Brohn has his eyes glued to the door. “What is it?” he whispers.
“We’ve broken into a lot of places before, right?”
Brohn and Rain both nod at the same time.
Rain asks, “So…what about it?”
“Do you ever remember it being this easy?”
“Easy is good,” Rain assures him, although she says it slowly and with a hint of doubt.
“Yeah,” Brohn adds. “Start complaining when it’s a matter of life or death.”
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I’m kinda with Card on this one. This is Buckingham frackin’ Palace, and we’ve seen, what…two knights? Four checkpoint guards? And a room full of sleeping kids?”
“Maybe they’re all out fighting a battle or something,” Brohn offers. “The Banters said these Royal Fort Knights are a pretty belligerent bunch, right? And that there really aren’t that many of them.”
“I guess.”
“Come on,” Rain insists. “We’re wasting time.”
Taking a quick look back down the hall to make sure we’re not being followed, the four of us slip the rest of the way into the large, ostentatiously decorated room. It’s definitely the room All-to-Pot described. Only no motion sensor, no guards, and definitely no Compressed Quantum Alternator. There is a glass cube suspended maybe twenty feet in the air from the highest part of the towering cathedral ceiling. But we can tell from here that it’s empty.
It’s just as well. Our hastily drawn-up plan called for me to tap into Render and try to glide-fly up to the box to retrieve the Alternator, and I’d hate to have my friends see my head explode from the effort.
“Okay…” Cardyn drawls. “What now?”
I try unsuccessfully to keep the wincing pain out of my voice when I suggest, “Now, we get out of here.”
Rain heads to the door and edges past Brohn and out into the corridor. “Two things for sure. First, the Alternator’s not here.”
“And second?” Cardyn asks through a mini tremor that quakes through his whisper.
“Second is that Terk’s life is on the line, so we’re not leaving here without it.”
Cardyn keeps his voice low as he calls after Rain who is already out of the room and back in the corridor. “But how are we supposed to—?”
“We search this entire palace,” Rain says over her shoulder. “Room by room. If anyone tries to stop us…well, we’ll do what we have to do. For Terk.”
And then she’s off, speed-walking in a crouch down the hallway, with the rest of us—hearts racing, unsure of what’s ahead, a specific goal in mind, and absolutely no plan—sprinting to catch up.
25
Dungeon
With Rain back in the lead, we start to make our way out. Only we’re not heading out of the palace, just out of the network of corridors that got us here.
I’m getting that weird feeling of being followed again.
“This way,” Rain whispers back through the damp gloom.
“You’re sure?”
“Um. No, actually.”
“What about your Culling?”
Rain shakes her head at Cardyn, her eyes downcast and glossy. “I’m not getting anything.”
“I can’t find Render, either,” I admit, tapping my temple. I don’t admit how scared I am to really try all that hard right now.
More out of habit than anything else, we follow Rain, who I’m now convinced is as lost in this vast palace as we are. I have to give her credit, though. I know that in her mind, every step we take could be getting us a step closer to finding the power source we need to save Terk’s life.
Of course, every step could just as easily be leading us to our death.
At one point, Rain
stops us, and we skitter backward and duck into the open doorway of a food pantry attached to a massive kitchen.
“It’s a guard,” she whispers, leaning out and glancing down the hallway.
We take a chance and peer around the corner. Sure enough, a small boy in leather armor over a white smock with a plum-colored rope-belt is plodding along. He’s busy cleaning under his fingernails with a small dagger, not much bigger than a letter-opener.
He’s joined by another boy, also in a belted smock and leather armor. The two boys pause to complain about unfair food rationing before moving on, eventually disappearing through a set of glass doors and up a wide marble staircase.
After a few more minutes of the palace’s otherwise eerie silence, we follow Rain down a different set of staircases where we wind up opening a heavy wooden door leading into a poorly lit basement. The floors are made of packed earth and smooth cobblestones with the length of the corridor lined with iron-barred cells.
It takes us a second for our eyes to adjust to the dark. When they do, we see what we wish we hadn’t:
Rows of dirty fingers curled around the bars and the whites of eyes staring at us from the darkness.
Brohn stops dead in his tracks, his arms out to protect us. “Holy frack. They’re kids!”
Sure enough, these are mostly Neos and possibly Juvens, although in their emaciated state it’s hard to tell one age group from another.
The young boys and girls are breathing hard. Panting, really. But they don’t say anything as we step into the subterranean dungeon.
We walk slowly down the grim and musty corridor, edging our way in a four-person clump between the two rows of kids in their dark, iron-barred cells.
In the middle of the corridor, Brohn stops and steps up to one of the small chambers. “Who are you?”
The thin, hacking voice of the small girl behind the bars says, “Angela. My name is Angela. But everyone calls me ‘Doddle.’”
“Why are you here?”
“We’re Banters.”
“Wait. You mean like Ledge’s people?”
“The Royals took us. ‘Elps keep our folks in line.” She sounds insanely nonchalant about it. “Sometimes they take us as payment.”
I must look confused when I ask, “Payment for what?” because she cough-laughs behind her little hand.
“Payment for protection.”
“And food!” a little boy chimes in from the cell behind us.
“Or sometimes they just take us as punishment,” a small voice calls out from one of the barred cells down toward the end of the row.
Turning in the direction of the voice, Brohn sets his jaw. “Punishment? For what?”
From inside his cell, the boy shrugs. “Askin’ for more power mostly, I guess.”
Cardyn claps his hand onto Brohn’s shoulder. “I’m thinking this is a conversation for another time, in a much safer and less scary place.”
Brohn pauses for a second before shaking his head. “If we leave without that Alternator, Terk’s dead.”
“If we stay here,” Cardyn says, backing his way toward the door, “we’re all dead.”
Considering all we’ve been through, it’s embarrassing to admit, but this place—this whole set-up—is giving me the creeps. Almost without realizing it, I’ve started backing up along with Cardyn.
“Can we come wif ya?” A squinty-eyed boy reaches through the bars and stretches his dirty little hand toward Rain.
“Well, we’re not leaving you here,” she says after a pause.
“And how are we supposed to get them out?” I ask.
“And where are we supposed to go with them if we do?” Cardyn asks.
Brohn steps forward and tells the kids in one of the cells to step back. They do, and he grips two of the solid iron bars in each hand. He gives the black posts a firm and clattery rattle, which produces clouds of dust from the concrete ceiling and floor, but the bars stay in place. “They aren’t all that strong. Maybe I can rip them loose?”
“I meant get them out without making enough racket to call attention to ourselves,” I say.
Brohn nods his agreement and releases his grip. “You’re right. It’ll be loud. If I can even do it. I wish Terk was here.”
“If he were,” I remind him, “we wouldn’t need to be.”
“There’s a guard room that way,” Doddle says, her dirty finger pointing to the thick wooden door at the far end of the corridor. She brushes a tangled mass of stringy hair away from her face. “It’s where they keep the keys.”
Rain asks the girl if she’s sure, and the girl gives a vigorous nod and tells her, “Absolutely.”
“Okay. We’ll be right back.”
We make our way down the corridor of smooth, solid stones. The floor, ceiling, and both walls give off a cold, ominous aura, and I’m feeling like we’re marching our way to certain doom through the intestines of a snake.
Brohn leads the way up to the door. Pushing it open and striding through, he runs smack into a very tall woman dressed head-to-toe in a metallic camouflage robe of rippling blacks, browns, and greens.
The woman doesn’t budge. Instead, at least twenty girls and boys—all around our age—swarm around her on either side, launching themselves at us with the speed and ferocity of a clan of jungle cats.
They propel us backward into the space between the two rows of cells where we smash into each other and collapse to the hard ground in a tangled heap.
The kids in the cells, their little arms extended between their cell bars, holler and scream at the explosive commotion playing out before them.
The kids who pile on top of us are stronger than we are. Not better fighters, but they’re fast and ruthless, and, despite all of our training and Emergent abilities, we’re overwhelmed in seconds.
When Brohn manages to send two of the girls flying in opposite directions, four more take their place.
When he somehow manages to shrug two of them off, the woman in the camo-robe steps forward and drags the other two girls off by their collars. I’m wondering if she’s maybe on our side somehow, but then she reaches around and presses her fingertips to Brohn’s forehead.
Up close, I can see a bit of her face peeking out from under the dark cowl draped over her head. She’s got smooth skin, a delicate jawline, and she can’t be any older than I am.
Brohn slaps her hand away from his face before disappearing under an avalanche of punching and kicking kids, their weight crushing all of us down until we have no choice but to stop fighting.
The kids in the cells stop cheering as we, their almost-heroes, surrender and get dragged to our feet by the horde of our armed and armored assailants.
With at least four of them huddled around each of us and dispossessed of our weapons—including my Talon-gloves this time—we’re taken to a room they call the Grand Hall.
It turns out to be a dirty mess of a place with moth-eaten carpets on the floor and walls lined with scraps of torn tapestries.
The chairs were probably once polished and expensive, but now they’re barely more than scrap, many of them held together with thick bands of tape or coils of knotted twine.
The kids in the room are mostly older teenagers like us. Unlike the furniture, their clothes are still fancy-looking and surprisingly clean. There are some kids dressed like us in Medieval garb. Others are wearing more modern clothes. Some of the boys are even in suits. They’re all wearing as much jewelry as they can fit on their fingers, necks, and wrists. A few of the girls are even sporting small, sparkling tiaras.
At first glance, they look like a bunch of kids who raided their parents’ closets so they could go about playing posh.
The tall girl in the camo-cowl steps forward, her eyes shaded under her hood.
Now I’m positive she’s the same person I thought I saw lurking in the shadows right before we got pinched by the Banters just a few hours ago.
Apparently, though, she’s not in charge. Instead, another girl, not as tall a
nd not nearly as sinister looking, strides up to take her seat on a massive throne at the front of the room. She’s got silky reddish hair, leaf-green eyes, a roundish face, and the most glisteningly perfect skin I’ve ever seen.
Unlike the Banters, these kids—mostly girls—seem to know how to do royalty.
The throne is large and plush, giving off vibes of great comfort but also of great power.
The round-faced girl flicks one of her two braids of long red hair behind her shoulder. “I’m H.R.H.”
“What kind of name is that?”
Cardyn is answered from behind with a sharp jab from the butt end of a girl’s halberd. “Her Royal Highness. She’s the queen, ya bloody tosser.”
“Ouch. How was I supposed to know? Some of us aren’t dumb enough to have a queen.”
The girl jabs Cardyn again. “Naw. Just dumb enough to ‘ave a dictator arse throwin’ a spanner inta the works.”
H.R.H. raises a hand, and the girl guard lowers her weapon but not by much.
H.R.H. turns back to us and announces, her voice elevating to a dramatic, pretentious pitch, that we may call her, “Harah.”
She asks us who we are, and we introduce ourselves one at a time by name as she stares at us from under a raised eyebrow.
“We’re…um…a Conspiracy?” Cardyn says into the silence that follows, his voice rising as if this is somehow going to help.
“A conspiracy? I’ll say.” Harah leans back in her throne. “You broke into my palace, and you’ve got unauthorized weapons,” she says through a disarmingly sweet smile.
“Is that bad?” Cardyn asks.
“Naw,” the girl behind him hisses in his ear. “You’ll just get the standard death penalty. Don’t worry, though. Harah here’ll make sure yer ‘eads leaves yer bodies nice ‘n quick.”
26
Interrogated
“We were just looking for a power supply,” Brohn explains, his voice rising a bit as he sacrifices some its baritone rumble for the sake of diplomacy. “There’s a friend of ours, and…well, it’s kind of hard to explain. He needs power. And we heard you have a Compressed Quantum Alternator.”
