by Janean Worth
The most disturbing thing about the Sovereign was the fact that much of his body was no longer human. His hands were the most recent exchange. They had been surgically removed and replaced by Old Tech devices. The devices were made of metal and vaguely hand-shaped, attached to the man’s arms at the elbow. The Sovereign’s robes only partially covered the putrid flesh that would not heal after the joining. Dormet suppressed a shudder as he looked at them. He had seen what they could do, and death was only one of the uses for the Sovereign’s hands.
The Sovereign cleared his throat in displeasure and stared at Dormet meaningfully. One of the two tracken beasts in the room, one on either side of the massive throne, growled at the Sovereign’s sound of disapproval. One of the four House children that knelt along the side of dais, positioned there to serve the Sovereign should he need anything, whimpered at the sound the beast made.
Dormet realized belatedly that he had been staring and had not answered the Sovereign’s question. He quickly cast his gaze back toward the marble floor and cleared his throat.
“I do not know which device he has, Sovereign. It may be the one that his father had,” Dormet tried to keep his voice calm and emotionless, but his answer came out with a slight tremor. At the sound of the quiver in his own voice, his legs trembled with the urge to run from the room. The Sovereign did not like weakness. He also did not like uncertainty. When he asked a question, he expected a definitive answer, with no sign of a trembling voice or vague answers. Dormet wondered anxiously what new punishment he had just earned himself.
“Rise, Enforcer,” the Sovereign instructed.
Dormet rose to his feet slowly, resisting the urge to look at the Sovereign again.
“You have not brought me any useful information,” the Sovereign’s raspy voice slithered along Dormet’s spine.
Dormet felt icy sweat break out on the nape of his neck. One of the Strays whimpered again. Dormet felt like whimpering too.
“To date, you have been one of my best Enforcers. It is regrettable that you no longer prove to be helpful.”
Dormet allowed himself to take a tiny step backward, away from the Sovereign’s throne. He knew it was another show of weakness, and that it would not help his situation, but his instincts demanded that he move away.
The Sovereign hissed in displeasure.
Dormet allowed himself another step backwards at the sound, keeping his eyes downcast.
One of the children began to wail, as if he knew was well as Dormet what was coming next.
“Silence!” the Sovereign yelled. Dormet heard a very faint humming sound and saw a splash of red light reflected on the black marble at his feet. He looked up just in time to see a needle-thin thread of red light leap from the Sovereign’s non-human hand and strike the child directly in the forehead. A tiny dark hole appeared there, and a moment later, the stream of light exited the back of the child’s skull. The child stopped wailing abruptly, his lifeless body falling to the side.
“Feast,” the Sovereign ordered, and the two tracken at his side immediately leapt to their feet and began to devour the dead child.
Dormet felt vomit rise in his throat.
The Sovereign’s human eye watched the sight of the tracken’s violent meal for a moment, a slight smile on his thin liver-colored lips, before swinging his gaze back to Dormet. The malevolent smile grew wider as the Sovereign raised one inhuman hand.
Dormet turned to run. But he was too late. For a split second, Dormet saw the same thin red beam streak towards his own head. He felt a startling heat, made even more shocking by the frigid temperature in the room. A faint pop exploded inside his own skull. Excruciating fire enveloped his head a split second before he slid into the blissful rest of eternal sleep.
Chapter Nine
Kara lay in the crotch of the two large branches that she’d picked for her sleeping place. Mathew lay to the left of her on his own perch in the tree.
Her bed wasn’t uncomfortable, yet she couldn’t sleep. The makeshift hammock she had made from blankets and vines cradled her securely. Her arm was a comfortable pillow, and Jax lay against her stomach, half in and half out of her bag, his soft furry body providing just enough warmth under the blanket to keep her quite cozy.
The nighttime air was still and smelled wonderfully of the night-blooming flowers that were so abundant in the Old Forest, and the tree swayed ever so gently beneath her, as soothing as the rocking chair she barely remembered her mother rocking her in when she was small.
If ever there was a time when she should have slept comfortably, this was it. But her survival instincts kept her awake. Mathew seemed to have none, and she could hear him softly snoring as he slept.
Below them in the Old Forest, she could hear the soft scrabbling and hissing of the Fidgets as they tried to climb the tree. The faint moonlight that passed through the canopy of leaves overhead reflected in the Fidget’s eyes, gilding them with an eerie green glow. Hundreds of sets of softly glowing eyes moved through the darkness, gathering around the base of the enormous tree that housed Kara’s bed for the night, many of them tilted up to stare at her position in the branches above.
The small, mutated creatures could smell them, and they were desperate to get a taste of their flesh.
Kara shuddered. She had never seen so many Fidgets in one place. She’d had no idea that they existed in such numbers. The most she had ever seen together were three that had formed a small pack near the river’s edge by her cave. The hundreds of them gathered below frightened her more than the tracken that they’d encountered earlier. There would be no chance of getting away from hundreds of Fidgets – especially when she had never been to this part of the forest and there were no vines conveniently strung in the trees for an easy escape.
She tried not to think about the Fidget’s sharp teeth digging into her skin as they ate her alive and failed, vividly remembering when she had seen just three of them eat a still-living doe.
She was ever so glad that Fidgets could not climb, otherwise she, Jax and Mathew would have been an evening meal about two hours ago when the first of the Fidgets had appeared below.
Mathew snorted in his sleep, and the Fidgets quieted for a moment, their glowing green gazes turning toward where his blanket hammock hung in the tree. Kara wondered how he could be so blissfully unaware of the danger lurking below them. Did he care nothing for himself, or was he really that naïve?
He did constantly amaze her with his lack of skills and common sense, so she shouldn’t be surprised that he seemed to have no survival sense either. He had seemed so afraid of the Fidgets earlier, that she wondered how he could be sleeping so soundly now. When she’d dug deep into her bag and taken the hand-sharpened metal scraps that she’d honed into spikes out of it in order to show him how to climb a tree with them, he had urged her to hurry, as if he expected a Fidget to appear any moment. And now he slept as peacefully as a babe in its mother’s arms. She didn’t know what to make of his behavior sometimes.
She couldn’t help but think how much better off she would be if she had never seen him. He was spoiled and almost useless, and she had to keep reminding herself that in order to do the right thing and become the sort of person who could reach the Narrow Gate, she had to help him. No matter how much danger he put her in.
The Fidgets below fell silent again, and Kara felt gooseflesh rise up on her arms, knowing what their silence meant. The Fidgets had heard something, and it wasn’t Mathew’s snoring.
A moment later, she heard it too. Out in the forest, not so far away, a Fidget’s squeal of mortal terror blasted through the trees.
The horde of Fidgets began to mutter and hiss, milling about the base of the tree in indecision. Kara could tell that they did not want to leave the tree, where a fresh meal waited in the branches, but they must also be afraid of whatever was harming their fellow creature. They fidgeted and fussed in uncertainty, jabbering unintelligibly at each other.
The squeal came again, and this time, f
rom her vantage point in the tree, Kara could see the bright light that accompanied it.
Mathew awoke with a snort.
“What’s going on?” he asked. He sounded terrified.
“Be quiet and listen. I don’t know what it is.”
Mathew gasped, “Are those Fidgets down there?”
“Yes, now be quiet.” Kara tried to see through the darkness below to the origin of the light, but it was too far away. She heard the crackling of fallen twigs as whatever it was drew nearer to the tree.
“I thought you were only joking about them being real! You weren’t in any hurry to get up in the tree, so I thought you were just trying to scare me.”
She heard the horror in his voice, but she ignored it because his admission made her angry.
“You thought I was lying to you?” She hissed. “Why would I do that? No, no, don’t answer. Just be quiet! Something worse than the Fidgets is coming.”
The Fidgets below began to scurry away into the darkness. Kara could see a few of them nearest to the tree hunch over and begin digging into the ground. In moments, those Fidgets were gone from sight, only a small pile of disturbed dirt remaining behind as evidence. And, just like that, the forest floor below was empty of Fidgets.
Kara heard the approach of something large. Or several large somethings. Branches crackled and snapped. Whatever it was, it was not being stealthy and didn’t seem to care if it was heard. And that meant that it was something to fear. If a creature was large enough or mean enough that it did not need stealth, then Kara knew from experience that it was a creature to be avoided.
Then, even on the carpet of muffling leaves below, Kara heard the unmistakable sounds of hoofbeats.
“What is it?” Mathew’s trembling voice cut through the silence like a shout.
“Shhhh!” Kara hissed back. She slipped from her hammock onto a branch and began silently gathering her blankets, hoping that whatever was below had not heard his voice. As she gently stuffed the blankets under Jax’s furry belly inside her bag, she heard a sound that made her heart skip a beat.
The growl of a tracken cut through the night air moments before three of them lumbered into the clearing below the tree.
“They’ve found us!” Mathew wailed.
Kara closed her eyes in horror as the beasts tilted their heads toward the sound. In an instant, their yowls of triumph shattered the night air. Thanks to Mathew, they had found their prey.
“Don’t you ever listen?” She hissed at him, knowing that it was now useless to keep silent. “They didn’t know we were here until they heard you!”
“But, they came to our tree.”
“They were here because of the Fidgets!” Kara was having a hard time keeping control of her temper. In that moment, she bitterly regretted helping Mathew. She had been exposed to more danger since meeting him than she had in the past twelve months on her own. And now, with three tracken below, she knew their chances of escaping unscathed were very low.
“Gather your blankets. We have to leave.”
“But how?” Mathew asked, the whine that she so detested finding its way into his words. But at least he did as she said and began to dismantle the hammock.
“I don’t know yet,” Kara sighed and stroked Jax’s small head as it poked out from her bag. Poor Jax. What would they do to him if she were caught? They would certainly kill the little fox. And he would not be able to defend himself. He was barely more than a kit.
A moment later the tracken’s Enforcer masters appeared below. There were five of them, all mounted. Mathew must be very important if such a large number of them had followed him this far into the Old Forest.
“Mathew, is there something you haven’t told me?” Kara asked him.
“Like what?”
“The Enforcers wouldn’t have followed us this far if you were just an ordinary Stray. If a Stray escapes, they usually leave it to die after their initial search close to GateWide. But they have searched for you quite far away. Even I have never been this far into the Old Forest. Why would they do that?”
“I’m not special. Not anything special. Maybe they want the Old Tech?” Mathew sounded panicked again.
She hoped he didn’t do anything stupid.
“Maybe,” she agreed. “Who was your mom? What did she do?”
“Nothing. She didn’t do anything.”
Kara sighed, “I mean, what did she do for work? How did she get money to pay for food and other necessities?”
“I never really thought about it. I guess she bought food with the money my father left her. I never worried about the money or the food. She and the housekeeper always made sure I had everything I needed.”
Kara felt annoyance tug at her again. Of course they had made sure he had everything he needed. That’s why he was so spoiled. He’d never done a thing for himself. She had never experienced such care, even when she had not been a Stray.
“And what did your father do, before he died?”
“My mother said he worked for the Sovereign,” Mathew whispered, as if he had just realized why the Enforcers were so determined to get to him.
Kara sighed, “So he worked at the House?”
“No, no, she said he did things for the Sovereign.”
“What kind of things?” Kara asked, dread pooling in the pit of her stomach.
“I don’t know!” Mathew moaned. “She never said. I didn’t ask. I didn’t care! He died when I was younger.”
“They must think you know something. Or, like you said, they are after your Old Tech.”
“Then why don’t we just give it to them?” Mathew’s voice trembled as he said the words.
Kara felt her heart stutter again in her chest as she realized that the Old Tech was not nearly as precious to Mathew as it was to her. After all, he didn’t really believe in the Narrow Gate, did he?
Kara swallowed the anxious lump in her throat and tried to talk him into keeping it, “But don’t you want to find your father?”
“I do, if he’s there, but…” he didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t have to. Kara knew what he meant. He didn’t believe. Any of it.
“Here,” Kara said, trying to keep the despair from her voice as she stretched across the tree trunk to hand him her bag. “I’m going to find a way to get away from them. Please watch Jax for me. If I get caught, promise you’ll take care of him for me? Don’t let him die, okay?”
“Don’t go,” Mathew’s voice stuttered in fear as he took the bag from her.
Bitterness filled her throat. Again, he was only thinking of himself. He was not afraid for her or thinking about taking care of Jax. He was only worried about how her leaving would affect him.
“Promise!” she hissed, her temper getting the better of her. “Stop being so selfish!”
“Okay, I promise,” Mathew slung the strap of the bag over his shoulder and tentatively patted Jax’s head as it popped out of the opening to nuzzle under his arm. “And… And, be careful.”
Kara’s bitterness faded a bit. “Thank you. I will. And, please, don’t give them the Old Tech. It is too valuable.”
She gave one last look at Jax’s tiny furry head before she began the climb down the trunk of the tree.
Chapter Ten
Kara had been captured. Mathew didn’t know what to do. He crouched in the tree, holding her bag, clinging to the branch, his chest filled with panic.
Below him the Enforcers were laughing as they taunted her.
“What are you going to do now, little Stray?” one of the Enforcers sneered at her as another bound her wrists. “No more vines to swing from to get away. That was a clever trick, but not clever enough. ”
“Where is the boy?” the Enforcer who held Kara asked, swinging her around to look at her face. “My name is Enforcer Gabert. If you help us capture the boy, I will ask for you to be sent to serve me, instead of the House.”
Mathew’s heart thudded in his chest. Would Kara tell them where he was? Servitude to an En
forcer would be much better than going to the House. If he had been the one to get caught, he would take that deal in a heartbeat.
“I won’t tell you,” Kara told the Enforcer, her voice clear and free of fear.
Mathew didn’t know how she could act so brave. She was just a girl. And a Stray. How could she stand up to the Enforcer like that?
One of the other Enforcers chuckled. It was a mean sound containing no mirth. “Ah, but you will.”
“He’s close, isn’t he?” Enforcer Gabert asked.
“Don’t you know where he is? Haven’t your tracken found his scent yet?” Kara returned the Enforcer’s question with one of her own.
Above them, huddled against the tree trunk, Mathew wondered why she would taunt them like that, then he realized that she was probably trying to avoid lying. More of her doing the right thing.
The Enforcer shook her, and Mathew winced as he saw her fragile body handled so violently.
Desperation clawed at his throat. It was his fault she was down there. If he had listened to her and kept quiet, the tracken might never have found them. And, if he had tried to find a way to escape, instead of being a coward and letting her go off alone, then perhaps she would still be safe instead of being hurt by the Enforcers.
