Hearts & Minds: Book Six in the Crown of Blood series

by White, Gwynn

  He hoped that being with him was the reason she was being so muddle-headed.

  Her informa flicked on. She smiled at him in its ghostly light. “Here. You take it.”

  Their hands brushed as he took it from her. She turned away, but not before he caught a faint darkening of her skin. “Don’t be complacent just because you’ve got light. That bridge is still treacherous. Put your feet exactly where mine are, and you’ll be fine.” She stepped onto the narrow plank.

  Careful not to point the light at the crevice, he shuffled after her. His ears and his feet tingled with vertigo. He tried to block it out by focusing on the hollow clunk their boots made on the plank. When that didn’t work, he counted his steps. At the twentieth, his boot hit rock. He heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Almost there,” Anna said, leading down another narrow tunnel. A low light gleamed at the end of it. It lit a small wooden door. Anna towered above it.

  Nicholas would have to crouch to get through it with any degree of comfort. “What is this?”

  “A very special place. It belongs to Farith. My father gave it to her when we were growing up. I think I was…” Anna’s nose scrunched. “Well, let’s just say I wasn’t the best sister I could be back then, even though she’s my twin. To compensate, our father gave her this cave. I only ever come here by invitation. I’m not even sure that Farith will welcome me in, but it’s the safest place I know of to bring you to.”

  In the Blade Furnace, Xipal had threatened to kill Farith if Anna would have refused to fight him. Both girls had refused to submit to the blackmail. In that raw, tense moment, he had seen nothing but devotion between the two sisters.

  But some wounds ran deep. Anna must have hurt Farith on a visceral level. Just one more pain amongst many. Just one more relationship that needed healing. Just one more act that needed forgiveness.

  “Well, are you going to knock?”

  Anna raised her perfect eyebrows. “Maybe you should. Farith loves you.”

  He shook his head. “Uh-uh. You don’t get away with that so easily. This is your sister. Your door. You knock.”

  She grimaced. “Will you ever stop being a Light-Bearer?”

  He smiled. “Sorry, but I think it’s who I am.”

  It struck him how far they had come in just a short time. They had touched, and neither of them had shattered into a million pieces. They had spoken, shared a few jokes, been together in the dark, and they had survived it. Maybe there was hope.

  Anna tossed her braid over her shoulder. “Oh well, I’m a warrior. I’m sure I can handle my titch of a sister.”

  But her knock was gentle.

  A gruff voice called out, “Who’s there?”

  “Farith, it’s me, Anna.”

  “I thought I told you and Nicholas not to come back until…”

  “Xipal and his people are attacking. Lynx has…”

  The door flew open.

  “Where’s Cowpat?” She saw him behind Anna. “Oh, there you are.” She grabbed his arms and tried to drag him into the cave.

  “Whoa. Slowly. I have to duck.”

  “Tall people.” Farith rolled her eyes. “Then do it already.”

  He crouched down and shuffled onto a mattress jammed between rows of shelves, sagging under the weight of hundreds of books. More books than he’d even imagined existed. He crawled across it to a mound of pillows tucked in a nook underneath the bookshelves. He flopped down to relax.

  Anna waited at the door.

  “Well, are you going to come in?” Farith snapped. “Or are you just going to stand there gormlessly?”

  Anna plopped down onto the bed and pulled the door closed behind her.

  “What’s happening out there?” Farith demanded.

  “We don’t know the full extent of it,” Anna began.

  “I heard people on the mountain,” Nicholas interrupted. “We let Axel know. It’s being taken care of.” He didn’t want to talk about how close he and Anna had come to being killed. He may not have been a fighter, but it was still his job to help protect the girl he liked. He’d failed miserably at it. He gestured to the books and joked, “All this reading, and it hasn’t even helped you.”

  Farith shoved him. “As if you would know. I could hit you with a book and you’d be no smarter.”

  Mom and Uncle Tao had tried to teach him to read by scratching letters in the sand. Without any books to read, he hadn’t seen the point. “I spent my youth doing more exciting things. Like charming bees.”

  “It sure came in useful in the Blade Furnace,” Anna said.

  Farith glared at them both. “So, you’re talking to each other now? Does this mean you’re just friends or did do as I asked and kiss?”

  Anna looked down at her hands. For a self-proclaimed warrior, she sure was nervous around her titch of a sister.

  He didn’t blame her. Farith could be abrasive. He gave her a really?-you-honestly-think-I’m-going-to-answer-that look.

  Farith smiled smugly.

  Not sure what she assumed, he slapped the closest book. “Tell me about these.”

  “You’re deflecting.”

  “All day. And all night. And way into next week, if I have to. Now answer my question.”

  Anna snorted a laugh. “Good luck getting her to answer questions when she’s decided not to.”

  “Huh. That’s harsh.” As if to prove her point, Farith stood on the bed and ran her hands along the shelves. “They came from Lapis, from before the war. King Jerawin gave them to me. They were the last books he managed to salvage before the Chenayans sacked his country. Every single one of them speaks to me in ways that no one else in the world can.” She paused. “Except for Meka.”

  Nicholas resisted the urge to close his eyes at yet another recounting of the consequences of Lukan’s madness. “Which is your favorite?”

  She plucked a little stool off one of the low shelves and rested it on the mattress. She clambered upon it and reached up to the highest shelf above her pillows. Even then, she couldn’t see properly onto it.

  “Your favorite book is tucked up there?” Anna said. “That’s weird. Why isn’t it down here where you can see it?”

  Farith gave her a scathing look. “If one keeps one’s treasures where everyone can see them, then everyone can take them.”

  Anna looked at him and shrugged. He smiled back at her.

  Farith fumbled on the shelf. She frowned and fumbled some more. She jumped off the stool and staggered back on the bed until her back hit the door. She peered at the shelf—and swore a string of expletives.

  “Do you want me to lift you up?” Nicholas asked.

  “Do you want me to give you a black eye?”

  “A black eye? Why not?” He stood, scooped her up in his arms and lifted her until she was eye-level with the shelf.

  She swore at him and then hissed, “Who the friggin’… Someone came in here and stole my book.” She shook her head disbelievingly. “But why would they leave this?” She pulled out a book no thicker than Nicholas’s fingers and no taller than his hand. Her eyes widened to popping point.

  Intrigued by what she’d seen, he dropped her onto the bed and plopped down next to her.

  She glowered at him. “Thank you for nothing.”

  He took the book from her. It had a picture of Dmitri on the front cover, embedded into the leather, with words written beneath that he couldn’t read. “I recognize this. Cricket gave it to me. She’s…” He wasn’t going to say she was dead. “In Cian, when I first escaped.”

  He flipped through it, seeing the familiar beautiful but gruesome illustrations. “She said it was really important. I managed to keep it for long enough to show Grigor and Natalia. They, they were impressed by it. I was going to get Meka to read it to me. But then I lost it.” He looked up at the shelves. “How did it get here?”

  Anna grabbed the book out of his hands. “You say the dead gave you this.” He hadn’t mentioned the dead. She must have connected the dots. “We sh
ould call Clay. Remember, you said you would tell him the moment the dead contacted you.”

  “Let’s look at it first.”

  She opened it on page one and scrambled to sit next to Farith. Their heads dropped as they both started reading.

  “Hey,” he objected. “If you are going to read it, you better read aloud to me.”

  Someone knocked on the door and a voice called out, “Farith, it’s Clay. Are Nicholas and Anna in here?”

  “This place has become like a public meeting house,” Farith moaned. She reached across the bed and flicked the door handle. “Come on in. I think we’ve got something that might interest you.”

  Clay remained squatting in the passageway. “My uniform is bloody.”

  “What happened out there?” Anna asked. “Is Xipal—”

  “He’s still unaccounted for,” Clay said. “But we have captured some of his army. He’ll be next.”

  Farith held up the book. “I found this on my shelf”

  “I suspected you would.” Clay lifted the book out of Anna and Farith’s hands. He looked at the cover. “The illustrated book of Chenaya. The full history of the Dmitri curse,” Clay said, reading out loud. He hitched in a breath and started thumbing through the pages. He stopped every now and again, presumably to read to himself. Anna and Farith leaned over his shoulder.

  Nicholas’s stomach knotted. Yet again, he, who was supposed to be the Light-Bearer who knew everything, was left to look on. The ignoramus in the room. He cursed himself for not taking his writing lessons seriously. And could he even ask what the book was about with his ice crystal? Would it give Lukan information that could harm them all? His head dropped to his knees, so he didn’t have to look at what he shouldn’t see.

  After a few moments, Clay said, “I need to get this to Axel and Lynx. We need to talk about it. This could change the shape of everything.”

  Nicholas nodded dully, hating that the book was passing out of his hands yet again. But how could he know what it contained when Lukan could listen into his thoughts? “Go. Take it. Use it. I will do what I am told.”

  Clay reached in and squeezed Nicholas’s knee. “Thank you.”

  And then he was gone with the book.

  Nicholas watched the open doorway, unable to explain the sense of emptiness, loss, and longing that settled in the pit of his stomach.

  Twenty-One

  Hollow Victory

  Axel counted the captured teenagers streaming through Hatch Seven. Xipal had certainly been eclectic in his recruitment. Every skin color the planet offered was represented in their hard faces. The only unifying factor was that they were all urchins few, if anyone, in their homelands would miss. As Lynx had observed, promises of regular meals had lured them into Xipal’s army. What Xipal’s motive had been in creating that army, no one knew for sure.

  Axel had his suspicions and they all centered around Xipal’s hatred for him.

  Xipal’s father, King Liatl of Tarach, had died in Lukan’s Dragons Fire raid on Oldfort. Instead of heeding Axel’s warnings about the impending disaster, Liatl had attacked him. Heron had intervened. Both Liatl and Heron had died.

  Xipal blamed Axel for his father’s death.

  It still made little sense to him why Xipal would use untrained youngsters when he had some of the best fighters in the world under his command. Offered gold by Xipal, a thousand of Axel’s Blades, highly skilled Tarachian fighters, had defected from the alliance to reunite with Xipal. Given the timing of that defection, it was unlikely that they would have been involved in the Chenayan attack on Xipal’s capital. Those men were still out there somewhere. It was one of the reasons Chad hadn’t yet reclaimed his deserted capital city.

  Added together, it all made Axel wary.

  The line thinned and then stopped. Apart from Lynx and Clay, all the alliance fighters had returned to Hatch Seven. Blue, Nao Woo, and Hinge had arrived back some time ago. According to them, Clay and Lynx were at the Cascades. He had tried to raise Lynx on her informa, but she hadn’t answered. Clay had. He’d reported that all was well on that side of the mountain.

  He gave the order to seal the hatch. Cogs ground together as the giant door rumbled across the opening. Once it had closed, he turned back to the urchins.

  Under the watchful eyes of his alliance fighters, three hundred and twenty teens huddled together in Hatch Seven’s loading bay. Uninjured, they’d been disarmed by his mercenaries in the shortest skirmish in the alliance’s history.

  “That’s it for the boys, Warlord.” Lieutenant Marat, also known as Ferret, saluted. The jasper next to his eye glinted in the harsh lights beating down into the cavern. Immune to his ice crystal, Ferret had been with the alliance for a couple of years. “They dropped their weapons on command.”

  Misgivings about rescuing them still haunted him. Lynx had insisted that the boys be granted access to the mines. He issued a request to the pantheon that he didn’t live to regret it.

  Although the battle had been short, he had lost five men. Fifteen others had been injured. They had already been sent to the medical wing.

  “How many boys were killed?” His jaw hardened as he waited for the answer. No commander liked sending men to fight children. But then those children had been given the option of surrender. The dead had refused it.

  “Hard to say, Warlord. They were spread across the mountain. But we figure we got about two hundred of them”

  What a pointless waste.

  “Send out a burial detail in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Blades in Xipal’s army hadn’t surrendered so easily. Unfortunately, only seventy had been captured alive. About twenty of them had been injured. They’d already been moved to the medical wing. As with the children, the final tally of their dead was still sketchy.

  “Come.” Accompanied by Ferret, he strode across the cavern to assess them.

  Hands manacled and guarded by shotgun-wielding alliance soldiers, the uninjured Blades sat together on the floor.

  He recognized every single one of them.

  Not too long ago, they had worn black alliance uniforms with the Pathfinder comet emblem. They had eaten in the same mess as the soldiers guarding them.

  Now, they were a ragtag bunch of thugs with no obvious badge or insignia.

  Not one of them had the guts to meet his gaze.

  He stopped in front of Coyotl. He’d been an officer in Red platoon. “Where’s Xipal?”

  Coyotl’s eyes remained fixed on Axel’s legs.

  Ferret kicked Coyotl’s boot. “Look at the warlord when he speaks to you.”

  Axel held up his hand. “No need for violence, Ferret.”

  Ferret saluted. “Sorry, Warlord. But the bastard is a traitor. They all are.”

  Coyotl glowered at Ferret.

  “No. They just followed their hearts—straight to Xipal’s gold reserves.” Axel asked Coyotl again. “Where’s Xipal?”

  Coyotl shrugged, still not making eye contact. “Didn’t see him.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Coyotl shrugged again. “What you gonna do? Beat it out of me?” He looked at Axel for the first time. “That’s not who you are. We all know that.”

  “More’s the pity,” Axel said. “My fists are itching to punch something.”

  The only way to get the truth out of him would be through a lengthy interrogation. One that didn’t stoop to violence. But by the time Coyotl broke down and spoke, Xipal would be long gone.

  Or perhaps not.

  Happily, he had just the man for the job. He pulled out his informa and called up Gallen, who had helped take Felix and Mama to their cell. He and Marrow managed Dark Cave, the prison section of the mines. They were known for their interrogation skills.

  “Warlord?”

  “I’m sending you and Marrow some Blades. Have a chat with them. I need to know where Xipal is and what he’s planning.”

  Coyotl shuffled.

  Axel grinned at him. “Enjoy
your evening.”

  While Coyotl swore, Axel spoke to Ferret. “I’m heading to the hospital wing. Get this lot down to Dark Cave.”

  Ferret saluted.

  Axel hopped onto a one-man transporter. To avoid the crowd, he drove through a network of less frequently used tunnels to get to the hospital wing. The parking area outside the hospital cave was still crammed with the vehicles used to transport the injured. He drove farther down the tunnel until he found a clear spot. It was a brisk walk back to the hospital. He pushed open the doors leading into the waiting room.

  A horribly familiar scene greeted him.

  The chairs had been replaced with two dozen gurneys. Only today, instead of just injured alliance soldiers, Xipal’s men were here too. They made up the majority of the casualties. Thankfully, the triage nurses had been able to push his troops to the end of the treatment line.

  Guarded by his true defenders, doctors moved from Blade to Blade, patching up everything from shattered limbs to broken heads. Stoic as only a Blade could be, none of their patients whimpered.

  Just as well. From what he could ascertain through the blood and gore, most of them had defected from the alliance. They’d get little sympathy in here tonight.

  To make the point, Axel greeted his own people first. After laughing a few lame jokes, he headed across the room to the Blades. Silently, he stopped at each bed to stare at faces.

  Xipal wasn’t amongst them.

  And on closer inspection, some of their injuries weren’t as bad as he’d first thought. Just one more risk in having them in the mines.

  Doctor Amaryth wiped his hands on a cloth and greeted him. “Bad business this. And on a night that we should have been rejoicing.”

  Axel nodded. “That’s probably why Xipal chose tonight. How many of these men can be moved to Dark Cave?”

  Amaryth looked pained. “I would much rather keep them here.” He gestured to the guards. “Surely they can keep watch?”

  They could, but with Xipal still unaccounted for, he wanted these enemies in prison cells where there was no chance of escape. “Only the desperately injured stay here. The rest get moved out as soon as you’re done with them.”