by Della Roth
I start to hear snippets of conversation from the citizens behind me, their voices high, nervous, shaky.
“…Roberta still on the other continent…”
“…make it out alive?”
“Don’t be daft, Liono. Make peace wid da goddess. We’s all but dead tonight…”
“…thought the princess, I mean queen, would be taller…”
“…braver than the prince, that’s for sure…”
I look at Roland to see if he’s also listening, but I can’t tell. His face is stony again.
We stop.
The weapons master pauses to unlock a thick, metal door.
“Are we at the Palace Skyscraper already?” I ask him. I notice my hands shake and I feel out of breath. Oh, Goddess, what have I gotten us into?
Mr. Underwood grunts over his shoulder, his hands busy with a large ring of keys.
“A basement level,” Roland answers instead. “East side of the palace. We’ll be able to cut off their access into the city.”
“And what, become trapped as they surround us?” I snap. “I doubt they’ll just turn around, call it a day, and give up.”
“Me, too,” Roland says. “I told you that we’ve been preparing for this day for a long time. It won’t be easy for them.”
I hear Mr. Underwood’s key hit home. The lock clicks and the door groans loudly as he pushes it open into a dark room. A cold blast of air hits me in the face. Then I realize it’s freezing droplets of water hitting my skin.
The roar of rushing water drowns all other noise, so asking questions would be useless. But what the hell kind of room is this?
The weapons master leads the way, his torch’s light gently illuminating items in the room. It’s a vast chamber with gleaming metal pipes, but I don’t see a floor. I quickly pocket my tablet, its light shuts off, and I retake my blueblood root spike back from Roland as he yells something to me.
“A bridge!”
A feeling of vertigo spins my head, and the feeling doesn’t subside.
Stone stairs turn to solid, slippery wood planks that dip with my steps. My fingers reach out to grasp a thick, cold, wet, braided hand rope. My mouth is suddenly dry and I can’t seem to swallow the lump in the back of my throat.
Water splashes loudly below, gushing in from the right side of the room, and, as I walk slowly over the bridge, the others trailing behind me, staring at the glossy liquid shooting out of large, round silver tubes, I realize it isn’t black water. It’s clear, clean, and it smells delicious.
It’s a water purification chamber.
I could stay here forever, much like how I wanted to linger at the glorious waterfall yesterday, and I allow everyone to pass me. I don’t know why I stop to stare into the faded watery reflections, but the world swirls as someone bumps into me. I slip on the icy planks. I shove the blueblood root spike away before I fall on it as my right side smacks hard on the bridge.
Dammit, how many times am I going to hurt this shoulder?
A rough groan escapes my lips.
A pair of boots block my vision before they kick my weapon away; it slides off the wooden planks and into the water below.
“I’ll help you,” the boots’ owner says in my ear as firm hands grip me in my armpits and lift me up. I expect to see Roland, but he’s up ahead, having kept moving. He probably never knew I fell.
The face in front of me is hideous, bloody, scabbed up, and filled with contempt.
I knew I hadn’t seen the last of White Rose.
Fifteen
“I FIGURED YOU’D BE dead by now,” I say. “What a shame. Your face looks like shit.”
I might sound confident. Cocky, even, but in actuality, for some reason, my vision is blurry. I can barely see a few feet in front of me. Either it’s the water getting into my eyes or my body’s just about to shut down due to exhaustion.
“Shut up!” she screams.
Why hasn’t she attacked me yet? Then a searing pain explodes in my shoulder. White Rose’s fingernails dig in relentlessly before she pulls away from me. I’m instantly awake.
We are alone on the bridge.
“It’s worse than you know,” she says cryptically. Only one side of her face works. The blueblood spikes I embedded in her face yesterday made the entire right side slack. Then I notice she’s holding onto the bridge’s hand rope like it’s the only thing she’s capable of doing.
“What are you talking about?”
“Outside. It’s an ambush no one is expecting. If you go out there, you will be slaughtered.”
“Why should I listen to you? You tried to kill me earlier.”
“That’s before I understood everything. Before I realized the Grandfather was using me for his own purposes. But it’s bigger than that. It always has been, but I’ve been too stupid to see it before now. When you spoke about your brother, I knew I could never kill you because of him.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “What does my brother have to do with any of this?”
White Rose starts laughing hysterically. “Everything, Rahda. Do you remember the apple orchard?”
I shove her away from me and she nearly slips and falls, but she still laughs as if she has nothing left to lose.
“You’re using my own speech against me. That’s how you know about the apple orchard.”
“You don’t remember me, do you? You caught us kissing once, Pareu and me, behind my father’s house. I think you were twelve. Why do you think he kept coming to my father’s orchard? He didn’t even like apples. But you did.”
I loved those apples. I loved escaping with Pareu.
A distant memory resurfaces of finding Pareu kissing—more than kissing, actually—a girl with white blonde hair. Then, later on, the same girl up in the trees waiting for us. Waiting for Pareu. Pareu telling her… secrets.
What secrets? I wrack my brain.
And yet here she is in front of me, delaying me, probably hoping to confuse me.
“So you knew my brother. Big deal. I’d say it’s an odd coincidence, but nothing that would convince me to spare your life.” I pull out my dagger.
White Rose smiles at me like a lunatic. “I can assure you that that’s not necessary.” She moves closer to the hand rope and then swings one leg over, then the other. “I don’t have much time left. I can feel the poison entering my brain.”
“What are you doing?” I scream at her, sheathing my dagger.
At that moment, I hear someone yelling to my left, though the rushing water conceals the actual words. But my soul knows the voice.
Roland.
White Rose starts another round of demented laughing and I swing my head back in her direction. I rush up to her, grabbing at the buttons of her shirt to keep her still.
“What do you know? Quick, before Roland gets here.”
One half of her face smirks at me, but I can tell she’s ready to end it all and jump into the waters below.
“The summer you turned twelve, Pareu learned why your family was in hiding. To protect you. From what, I don’t know, but he had other ideas. He was always full of grand, utopian ideas, wasn’t he?” She looks away, her eyes displaying a far-off memory. “My goddess, how we loved him.” She shakes her head. “Whatever your brother knew, it got back to the savage king. I know who put the bullet in Pareu’s head.” She looks hard at Roland as he walks toward us and then back at me. “The same man that killed my sister, Lisbeth. Don’t trust your heart, Rahda. It’s always wrong.”
She swipes my hand away from her shirt and leaps backward from the bridge. Like a graceful, yet damaged, scarred swan. I watch until she disappears, until Roland, with untroubled eyes, steps calmly to my side, until he whispers it’s time to go.
Sixteen
EVEN NUMBNESS HAS A feeling, like a quiet anger that can’t be gotten over quickly enough, or a memory that won’t come to the surface.
But, also like numbness, you can push it away until the pain finally registers. In my mind, I watch, rep
eatedly, White Rose fling herself off the bridge. Her shirt flapped against her skin and her face, Dear Goddess, her face was one of peace. She would have rather died than face the consequences of her pain, her memories, her actions.
I’m not like her. I’ve never given up. Pain, to a varying degree, has made me stronger. Though, consequently, I’ve never known peace. Turmoil always seems to brew just under my skin, like my body, mind, soul, and heart have never been in agreement.
And I don’t know what any of it means.
So when Roland looks my way with concern in his eyes, I can push the questions, the discomfort, the uneasiness away and pretend nothing is wrong.
Roland doesn’t buy it, but he says nothing as we climb out of the tunnel, through another door, and enter directly into the Palace Skyscraper.
It’s the same room with all the couches.
The room barely houses us and now, as I observe them, innocent citizens are huddled in groups of ten to twenty each. Mr. Underwood moves between them. Demonstrating how to use the weapons. Plotting. Explaining. Planning.
For their death, I think depressingly.
“Mr. Underwood has a plan?” I ask Roland.
“The less-abled ones will fight from above on the fourth floor. Bows and arrows. Rocks. There’s a balcony there. The rest go outside. We’ve strategically downed large trees from the Old City, the mountain paths, and flooded the western plains. Plus, we have the monk warriors. If you’ve never seen them in action, you’re in for a treat. Most of tonight’s citizens were either from Mr. Underwood’s northern mountain clan or those that refused to leave the continent during the plague break-out. I know what you’re thinking.” He holds up his hands. “They weren’t supposed to be here, but there’s nothing we can do about it now except protect them and allow them to fight with honor.”
“And the Grandfather has everyone else, including whatever beasts he’s summoned from Hades Rocks,” I hiss through my teeth. Five hundred against the world. “We might as well surrender. Maybe they’ll kill us quickly.” I see movement up on the regal staircase. Cat Evinas. I wondered where she was.
She comes down the steps like a queen in her own right, stops before us, and pulls me into an embrace. Roland looks at Cat oddly, like maybe she’s never hugged anyone before.
Cat’s stiff armor-like attire crushes my front as her communicator tablet pokes me in the shoulder blade. When she pulls back—in reality, she actually pushes me away while keeping her hands on my outer biceps to stare at me like a disapproving mother—I notice two long, sheathed swords, one on each of her slim hips.
“Ready for battle, I see,” I say, impressed. “Or are you just taking a break from kicking ass?”
“Don’t go into the main hallway unless you want to trip on bodies,” she says smoothly. “The servicebots are finding it difficult to clean it up.”
I can’t tell if she’s joking or not.
“How is it out there?” Roland asks after clearing his throat.
“The mountain is on fire, as is Widow’s Lane. Patroxi have joined in, but not on our side of the fight, or, at least I can’t tell which side they are on. Maybe they are on their own side and see this as a chance to gain some power.”
“Will they see you as a traitor?” I ask.
“They won’t see anything but a blur from my swords,” she answers, one of her thinly arched eyebrows cocks, as if I would challenge her statement.
The weapons master interrupts. “I be takin da folks upstairs now, mizzy.”
I step away and find the group that will be going upstairs. Wren and her granddaughter, Gilly, and a couple dozen others are in the group. I shake their hands and murmur, “With Honor and the Goddess,” to each. Wren grips my hand harder than any other.
“You may not be a mutie, but you certainly have guts, Rahda,” Wren says. “Go with Honor, Queen, and we will follow in Honor.”
Mr. Underwood escorts them upstairs as Roland, Cat, and I lead everyone else into the courtyard.
The mountain range glows bright orange and smoke billows angrily into the sky.
Roland turns to me. “I don’t know how today is going to end, Rahda. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I need to… I have to…” he pauses, running his fingers through his hair with intensity. “You mean everything to me. If I could give you my very soul, I would. I’d give it to you right now so that I could spend eternity with you. I’ve already waited more than a decade to see myself in your eyes. I’d wait forever. A million lifetimes. Eons. So…” He hesitates again and I feel like hours go by before he continues. “I need you to know that I love you, that I cherish you, and that I Honor you to the Goddess. I will follow you in Honor, my Queen.”
He pulls my hand up and kisses it longingly. Afterward, he cups my face in his palm and his eyes seem indecisive, unsure, though intense, before he pulls me in and kisses me on the lips. Hungry. Demanding. Unrelenting.
He pushes himself away, his breath ragged, and runs away from me, out of the courtyard and out to find a battle.
Cat stares at me a moment, as do the others, and then I shout, “Let’s go!”
Cat hands me one of her swords, and it feels wonderful in my hands. I push the numbness away, welcome the pain that normally settles around my heart, and rush out of the courtyard.
Seventeen
HEAT RADIATES AROUND ME, in me, and through me as I finally see the burning mountain range. It’s spectacularly ablaze, as if the Goddess herself touched it with an angry hand. An orange glow bounces off everything.
My shadow isn’t so much of a shadow anymore, but a short figure in brown robes, twirling two razor-thin swords at a pair of ghoulish, bald, troll-like beasts. In a matter of seconds, both beasts are cut down to the size of a mound of cut flesh.
Clinks of metal on metal ping my ears as the sizzle of the burning mountains echo down. Everyone talks, yells, grunts. I see the threat before I can react to it. A tall soldier with a swinging, spiked mace zooms at me just as Cat pulls me back.
“You’re a standing target, Rahda,” Cat hisses. She twirls around me, one of her arms pushes me back, and instantly, she slices through the soldier’s midsection and pulls out just as quickly. The soldier crumples sideways and lands unceremoniously on the cobblestone sidewalk.
But another quickly takes his place, a female solider, ready to battle Cat.
I don’t have the luxury of becoming a dumb spectator. A thick, gender-less Patroxi warrior charges me. I duck the flying metal chain it swings at me and it accidentally hits someone else, thus stalling its attack on me. I stay ducked down, run in, pull out my dagger, and embed it in the Patroxi’s neck, upward, between its acrylic scales.
The body falls backward. I pull out the dagger, pushing the Patroxi away from me and stepping up on it. I peer into its hazy, cloudy-colored eyes—they move ever so slightly, watching me as it dies—before I decide on what to do next. Inspecting its head, I remove the half-alien’s diamond-impregnated battle helmet, sort of like removing the shell from a turtle. I scoop out the leftover skull-matter and brain-guts, careful to avoid dislodging the Patroxi audio-system embedded inside, and shove it down hard on my own head.
It’s large, and some of the Patroxi’s brain-guts sluices down my skin, giving me a momentary chill, but it will work. Maybe I’ll be able to hear commands. Maybe not. At the moment, it’s all static, but so not loud that I can’t hear the sounds around me. Cat, whose sword moves like an exotic dancer hell-bent on destroying one enemy combatant at a time, turns briefly to stare at me. Then she shakes her head and resumes her task at hand.
I notice the smaller, squat-like men and women fighting with massive crossbows as large as their bodies are tall. Alben Underwood’s people. And they aren’t taking a beating from anyone, not even the tallest, largest soldiers or the meanest, grizzliest beasts.
Their dry, cut-up accents weave around me as they communicate with each other in a northern mountain dialect that I can barely understand at the best of times.
I move forward and widely around Cat, who’s now going toe-to-toe with a much larger opponent. Thin, bloody gashes now decorate her upper arms as she expertly wields her sword. It slices into the soldier just as something hits him from the backside.
When the soldier falls over, I see Alben Underwood lowering his crossbow, reloading it, and firing it into the gut of another enemy body.
“Git’a move on, mizzy,” he grunts at me, “or I’ll shoot ye myself fer bein’ a waste of space. Dat helmet looks stupid on ye.”
I plan to say a cutting remark, but there’s no time. I raise the dagger up and let it fly at Alben. His eyes widen suddenly and I know that if he could, in that moment, he’d shoot me with his crossbow.
However, the dagger sails over his head and impales into the right eye socket of the soldier behind Alben. It’s the same young girl I met yesterday, guarding the path to the monastery, and for the first time, I feel a sense of remorse. Her name is Deni. One of the Grandfather’s security guards. She drops instantaneously. Her Fisk 837 machine gun clatters away from her body, but not before a few rounds fire off.
Cat rears back suddenly—she’s already moved on and fighting another Patroxi—and I know right then that she’s been hit. Alben fires his crossbow into the Patroxi’s chest as I rush to Cat.
“I’m fine,” she yells at me as Alben retrieves his arrow. Cat checks herself. “I am not a child, Rahda. I can barely feel it.” I’m amazed at her strength and warrior-like stance. If I wasn’t already in love with Roland, I would fall hard for her.
A blood stain starts to saturate her left side—her fighting arm side—and I see that the bullet went clean through the triceps of her left arm.
She says something else, but I barely hear it. The sound in the Patroxi’s helmet starts to make sense.
“They’re sending another wave of Patroxi,” I say out loud, translating the Patroxi clicks and grunts as they come over the helmet’s audio-system.
“How do you know that?” Cat asks.
