Travelers

by K A Riley

  Squire leads us past two thick lion sculptures, up a set of wide, shallow stone steps and right up to the giant monument.

  With so many of the skyscrapers and office buildings smashed to pieces, it’s got to be one of the tallest intact structures left in the city. The base is a massive but somehow delicate curve of block marble. It reminds me of the prow of a ship. If a ship were made of marble, that is.

  The big sculpture itself is made up of smaller sculptures of people, mermaids, and eagles.

  Catching us staring at it, Squire tells us that it used to be called the Victoria Memorial.

  “Let me guess,” Cardyn says. “Now it’s called the Harah Memorial.”

  Squire stifles a small laugh and tells Cardyn he’s spot on.

  As we walk around the towering sculpture on our way to the palace, she pauses and points at different parts of it, telling us what each of the smaller sculptures stands for. “Constancy. Courage. Motherhood. Justice. Truth. Progress. Agriculture. Harah made us memorize them. She said that each one stands for something terrible that led to the destruction of our city and that we need to remember how stupid they all are, so we never repeat them ever again.”

  Next to me, Rain risks reaching out past one of the red knights to drag her finger along the giant sculpture’s marble base. She inspects the layer of dirt on her fingertip before wiping her hand on the side of her skirt. “Harah wants you to forget about Truth, Motherhood, and Courage? Aren’t those all good things?”

  “Harah says the higher up things sound, the easier they are to bring down.”

  “Sounds like a brillie philosophy,” Cardyn snorts.

  He’s rewarded for his sarcasm with a backhanded slap from the silver knight on our other side. The knight’s riveted glove barely connects, but the impact is strong enough to knock Cardyn into me and me into Rain.

  “Another word out of you,” the silver knight grumbles down at Cardyn, “and I’ll make sure there’s nothing left of you for Her Royal Highness to execute.”

  “Sir Barry, that’s enough!” Squire snaps at the knight. “Harah said no talking while you’re on probation.”

  Barry? Probation? What kind of twisted Medieval society are these kids running here?

  “Sorry, mum,” the red knight mumbles, his voice a breathy, low-pitched whoosh from behind his visor.

  Frowning, Squire leads us in a semi-circle around the rest of the Harah Memorial, down another set of wide, shallow steps, and back toward the palace.

  Instead of the doors we left from, though, this time we’re led around to the other side and guided through a set of towering, iron-spiked gates.

  We walk through a dark tunnel, the metal boots of the four knights pounding in heavy thuds against the cobblestones.

  Cardyn, Rain, and I all put our hands up to shield our eyes from the low, lengthening streaks of the early evening sun as we step out of the tunnel and into the clamor and chaos of the courtyard.

  “They’re all yours, sirs,” Squire says to the four giant knights.

  Saluting, the knights cluster around me, Cardyn, and Rain, and force us over to the foot of the same stage where Rain successfully passed Harah’s trial of riddles not more than a few hours ago.

  Above us, Harah stands in front of the guillotine with a short but muscular and bare-chested boy in position just behind it.

  As if to emphasize her total control over us and our total helplessness, she now has our confiscated weapons hanging in plain sight on a wheeled, wooden display stand off to the side near the foot of the stage.

  Two small boys in bare feet, oversized steel helmets, and spears far too tall for them to handle stand guard next to our weapons.

  I think about maybe making a run for it, maybe thrashing the two boys, grabbing my Talons and tossing the tomahawk axes and the dart-drivers to Cardyn and Rain, but I’m pushed back in my mind. Only this time, it’s by Render. I feel my eyes go black as I focus on listening to the voice slipping into my head on waves of lilting echoes.

  ~ Not yet.

  But I’m fast enough. If you help me. Strength…remember?

  ~ You’re plenty fast. For a human. But I have no intention of helping you get yourself and the rest of our Conspiracy killed.

  Then…you have a plan.

  ~ Not exactly.

  What then?

  ~ I have a friend who has a plan.

  I start to ask about this “friend” when the connection is severed by a clamor of voices and the boisterous, trumpeted thunder of a musical fanfare.

  Up on one of the balconies, a trio of boys with long golden horns pressed tight to their lips blast a loud series of deafening, discordant notes out over the courtyard.

  From her position at center stage and surrounded by servants with broad, colorful fans attached to the end of long handles, Harah prepares to oversee our execution.

  I look around for Brohn, but he’s nowhere to be seen among the rowdy crowd that’s gathered to watch us get our heads sliced off.

  I reach out to him with my mind. Like earlier, he doesn’t respond. Not exactly. And not with words. Instead, this time, it’s like a firm wave is pushing up against my body. Pushing, but also pulling.

  He’s not rolling out the mental welcome mat, but at least I’m fairly confident he’s still alive and probably somewhere nearby.

  There’s more going on here than we thought.

  Harah stabs a finger down at Cardyn. “You’re first.”

  With the two red knights behind him, the tips of their enormous swords pressed to his back, Cardyn takes a tentative step forward, his foot on the bottom of the stage stairs before turning to me. “Um. So…this is really happening?”

  I don’t answer. What am I supposed to say?

  Rain’s equally at a loss for words. That scares me almost as much as the looming guillotine.

  “I can try to Persuade them,” Cardyn says to us over his shoulder as he mounts the stairs. He doesn’t bother whispering. I can see why. The need for discretion kind of goes out the window when there are a hundred kids cheering to see your severed head and when inevitable death is a ten-foot walk away. “Kress? Rain?” His voice rises an octave. “Any thoughts here?”

  I know we should be reacting—screaming, clawing, fighting back somehow—but all Rain and I seem able to do is watch in frozen horror as Cardyn is forced over to the guillotine and then down to his knees by the shirtless, broad-chested boy in leather pants, military-style combat boots, and a black mask covering all but his eyes.

  Cardyn draws in a deep breath and suddenly doesn’t seem to share my terror. Instead, he gives me and Rain a wink from up on the stage before half-turning to direct his voice to the hooded boy.

  “You have serious moral objections to this,” Cardyn says to the executioner. “You’re thinking about whether what you’re about to do is justice or murder. That debate makes you doubt.”

  The boy in the black hood stops, his sweaty, hairy arms frozen in place as he grips the guillotine’s release lever.

  For a second, everyone in the now-murmuring crowd looks over to Harah, probably to see if she gave the executioner a “Halt” command no one else heard.

  Sitting on her throne off to the side of the stage, she looks as stunned as the rest of us. Scowling through clamped teeth, she pushes herself up and starts to walk over to Cardyn and the guillotine.

  Next to me, Rain tenses up, and I’m about to spring into action with her when we’re both stopped by Brohn who has dashed up behind us. He surges between us, knocking me and Rain in opposite directions as he leaps up onto the stage.

  Dashing over to where Cardyn is kneeling with his head still in the guillotine in front of the burly but immobilized executioner, Brohn delivers a swift knockout punch.

  I’ve seen Brohn in action plenty of times, but this time, my mouth hangs open.

  The person Brohn has just knocked unconscious isn’t the executioner. It’s Cardyn.

  37

  Chaos

  Cardyn
’s body slumps down, his head drooping on the wooden block at the base of the guillotine.

  The executioner’s hands slip away from the machine’s deadly lever, and the beefy boy drops, sobbing, to his knees, his mind still trying to unscramble itself from Cardyn’s intrusion.

  Brohn strides right up to Harah, throws his arms around her neck, and bends down to give her—and I’m sure this time—a full-on kiss on the mouth.

  What the—?

  Rain and I exchange a look, and this time, there’s no second-guessing what’s on her mind. Together, we leap up onto the stage before the knights have a chance to stop us.

  Bounding across the stage, Rain gets ahead of me and lunges at Brohn.

  For a big guy, he’s got amazing speed and matching reflexes. He manages to catch Rain by the collar and draw her in. He throws a punch, which she ducks, but he’s still got her firmly in his grasp by the collar of her shirt. He drags her toward him and prepares to unleash another strike, but I’m able to fling myself onto his back. I grab his wrist with both hands, which turns out to be a strategy with mixed results.

  Distracted from Rain, he lets her go. She tumbles backward, rolling off the stage and landing on the hard-packed surface of the dirt-covered courtyard at the feet of the gathered crowd.

  Meanwhile, Brohn snaps his arm straight, with me still clinging with vice-like desperation to his wrist. I go flying clean off the stage and land on top of Rain, knocking the wind out of both of us and cracking my elbow hard against the ground in the process.

  Pressed together in a dozens-deep semi-circle around us, the royal kids cheer and egg us on, urging us to get up and keep fighting.

  Rain and I look up to see Brohn standing on the stage, staring down at us, his back turned protectively toward Harah. With the slowly setting sun behind him, he’s a total shadow, so I can’t see his face.

  I shout up at him, anyway. “Brohn! What are you doing?”

  Rain scrambles to her feet. “This wasn’t part of the plan!”

  Brohn tilts his head just enough for us to see the traces of an amused, sinister smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

  This isn’t strategic, self-sacrificing Brohn anymore. Someone’s definitely controlling him beyond the hold Harah has on him as a bargaining chip.

  I’m going to find out what’s really going on. And I’m going to kill whoever’s behind it.

  I’m just about to leap back up onto the stage to confront Brohn—and hopefully help Cardyn—when shouts and screams fill the air as dozens of boys and girls come streaming into the courtyard.

  Rolling in like an onrushing tsunami’s white-capped waves, the faces are both familiar and friendly.

  Rain grabs my arm. “It’s the Banters!”

  Led by Ledge and Lost-the-Plot, the Banters barrel in, practically tumbling over each other as they unleash a furious, unrestrained assault on the Royal Fort Knights.

  Most of the royals are frozen in place, shocked at the sudden incursion, and are quickly dispatched by the Banters’ ferocious onslaught.

  The rest of the startled crowd whips around in a convoluted frenzy, scrambling over each other for weapons lined up in wooden racks on the walls or crawling for cover against the raucous invaders.

  Having fought the Patriot Army—an actual military made up of government-trained killers—I’m used to being in the middle of combat. But that was always against adults. This is the first time I’ve been in the middle of a battle between two armies of kids. And in an enclosed space on top of it.

  It’s a more chaotic and strangely more terrifying experience. It’s like there’s no strategy, just swing a sword, a dagger, a mace, a fist, or a broken-off broom handle at whoever’s closest.

  And right now, with Cardyn still immobilized under the guillotine and with at least six royal guards leaping to the stage to protect Harah, that means me and Rain.

  Jostled by the pandemonium igniting around us, Rain and I lock hands and sprint in a crouch down to the far end of the stage toward where our weapons are.

  “If we can’t get to Brohn,” Rain shouts, pointing to the wooden wheel containing Brohn’s arbalest, my Talons, Cardyn’s twin tomahawk axes, and her dart-drivers, “we can at least get ourselves armed-up again!”

  Above us, on the balconies and up in the rickety, homemade wooden turrets, the Fort Knights’ archers don’t seem to know which way to face. Based on the shouting on the far side of the courtyard wall, the whole palace must be surrounded by Banters.

  Frantic and clearly confused, the archers wind up zipping arrows outward and then spinning back around to rain another volley randomly down on all of us—me and Rain, the Banters, and their own fellow royals—in the courtyard.

  In their blind panic, most of their archers’ shots miss their targets, although a few Banters and even a few of the royals shriek out as arrows flash randomly past them.

  From the opposite side of the courtyard, a lofty set of gold-trimmed double doors smashes open.

  Charging out of the shadows and into the blistering light of the courtyard is a girl.

  Her hair is brown like mine, only lighter, with streaks of burnished auburn and deep golden highlights splayed through it. She’s a little shorter than I am, but she’s obviously strong, fit, and surprisingly calm considering she’s charging face-first into a full-on brawl and a hail of arrows.

  She’s either got heightened reflexes or else the archers are in particularly bad form today as their arrows go whizzing harmlessly to either side of her, burrowing themselves on steep angles into the ground.

  Maybe it’s a trick of the light or the confusion in the heat of battle, but the girl’s eyes look like deep black voids.

  Unlike most everyone else in here, she’s not in Medieval dress. Instead—decked out in blood-red leather pants, silver-buckled boots, a sleeveless black tank-top, and fingerless red leather gloves—she could be about ready to throw on a motorcycle helmet and join a biker gang.

  Behind her, a whole horde of the kids we saw from the dungeon earlier sprint along, armed, apparently, with whatever they could find along the way: wood-handled brooms and mops, fat-bottomed candlesticks, silver step stools, and what looks like every fork and kitchen knife they could pilfer along the way.

  Probably about my age but a little shorter and a whole lot faster, the coal-eyed girl leads the Banter kids in their furious, unhesitating assault on the crowd of Royal Fort Knights.

  The two silver knights and the two red knights, their swords and shields clattering to the ground, disappear under a wave of fearless Neos and Juvens.

  Taking advantage of the chaos, I call out for Rain to follow me.

  We slide to a stop at the wooden wheel where our weapons are hanging on iron pegs. Rain grabs her dart-drivers, and I slip the pair of Talon gloves onto my hands.

  The Banters, led by Ledge and Lost-the-Plot, his googly-eyed right-hand man, clamber over one another to get onto the stage where they swarm past a crew of Harah’s personal guards like a flock of very loud and very dirty birds.

  Accompanied by Trolly and her brother Chunder, they shove their way past Brohn, who is standing, his eyes in a puzzled squint, over Cardyn’s unmoving body at the foot of the guillotine and its still-stunned operator.

  Snapping out of his daze, Brohn grabs Trolly before she can reach Harah and whips her clean off the stage and halfway across the courtyard. Leaping onto Brohn’s back, Chunder comes to his sister’s aid but is met with the same fate, his round body cartwheeling through the air to land with an earth-shattering thump next to Trolly.

  Holding his head in his hands, Cardyn stirs and bolts up with a groan I can hear from across the courtyard.

  “Let’s go!” I shout to Rain, but she holds me back by my arm.

  “It’s too dangerous!”

  As if to illustrate her point, an arrow sears itself into the ground not more than six inches from my foot.

  Unlike the rest of us, Brohn doesn’t need to worry about the arrows or the chaos arou
nd him. As if he were armored, himself, the arrows, hurled rocks, and other projectiles thrown in the middle of the melee bounce off of his hyper-dense skin.

  One of the stray arrows must have struck him in a weird way because he grimaces and clutches his arm before shaking off the pain and going back to keep the Banters away from Harah.

  In the confusion, Cardyn manages to slip out from inside the guillotine and roll over to the edge of the stage.

  “Get over here!” I shout from under one of the balconies encircling the courtyard.

  He staggers, obviously in pain from Brohn’s punch and almost certainly baffled by the furious turmoil he’s woken up to.

  Stumbling and literally falling off the stage, Cardyn wobbles his way over toward me and Rain in a drunken lurch.

  But before he can make it halfway over, a Banter and one of the Royals, arms locked onto each other’s shoulders as they wrestle for control, slam up against Cardyn, knocking him to the ground.

  He crawls the rest of the way between the tangle of legs, slashing swords, and clanging armor until he reaches me and Rain.

  “What the—?”

  “It’s the Banters,” Rain explains in a flurry. “Brohn’s possessed and fighting against us, the kids got out of their cells, and there’s a girl with black eyes out there kicking ass!”

  “Holy frack! How long was I out?”

  “Not long enough,” I say with an eyeroll.

  Jumping back as an unconscious Royal slides toward us through the dirt, Cardyn points up to Brohn, who continues to plant himself between Harah and the attacking Banters. He’s forsaken our training and is relying on pure brute strength to keep the Banters away from Harah. “Which side is he on, anyway?”

  “It looks like he’s on her side!” Rain calls out over the din of the fray.

  Cardyn clenches his jaw and says exactly what I’m thinking. “Then let’s get him back on ours.”

  Cardyn’s explanation about Brohn just playing Harah so he could ultimately help us crush her made so much sense in my head just a few hours before.

  Now, it looks like maybe it was just wishful thinking.