Borderlands

by Skye Melki-Wegner

  Back in the cave, Teddy divvies up the remaining loot. I accept my handful of nuts and syrup, although I don’t feel like eating. It’s odd – my stomach grumbles, but now that I’m faced with food, I can’t bring myself to eat it. All I can think of is Silver.

  I know it’s not smart. It’s self-indulgent, really, to wallow in grief. I learned that much in Rourton. In the first days after my family died, I barely managed to survive because I was too busy sobbing my heart out. It was only when I hardened up and learned to put the grief aside that I managed to find food and shelter. That’s when I decided that it’s easier not to care for people. It’s easier to be alone. That way, they can’t hurt you when they leave.

  And if someone’s death actually manages to hurt you . . . Well, you evict that memory as fast as you can, and don’t look back. You can’t afford to. Not if you want to keep living.

  But in the last few weeks, I’ve broken my own rules. I’ve allowed myself to care. Radnor. Maisy. Clementine. Teddy. Lukas. I took that risk, and I care so damn much that it aches.

  And what Silver told me changes everything. She became an alchemist because the royals are expected to learn a skill – just like Lukas becoming a biplane pilot. She fled her own family because she didn’t want to play a part in the king’s atrocities. Just like Lukas.

  And then I let her die.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Teddy says. ‘You’re not eating.’

  I shake my head. ‘Nothing. I just . . . that mushroom porridge really stank.’

  Teddy grins, revealing a mouthful of syrup and nut mush. ‘That’s why you need some sugar. Gotta get your strength back up, I reckon, after an ordeal like that.’

  I force a smile and pick a nut from my palm. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘You’re right. Most traumatic sack of porridge I’ve ever dumped in a river.’

  There’s silence for a while. No one seems keen to talk about what happened today, and I’m fully onboard with the denial train. But my thoughts of Silver have turned to thoughts of Lukas. Even when she was dying, the old woman begged me to help him. To save him.

  He’s been missing for the better part of a week. My stomach churns when I think of where he might be. Alone in the forest. In a river. In the army camp . . .

  ‘When we get to the army,’ I say, ‘the first thing we’ll do is look for Lukas, right?’

  No one speaks. Clementine looks down at the nuts in her hand, and rolls one silently from finger to finger.

  ‘I mean, he’s part of our crew,’ I add, when the silence has stretched too long for comfort. ‘We can’t cross the Valley without him.’

  Teddy hesitates. ‘Look, Danika . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you know.’ He runs a hand through his hair, clearly struggling for words. ‘I mean, what happens if we get to the army camp and Lukas isn’t there? We don’t know for sure if he’s gone off to stop his family. What if he’s just . . .?’

  ‘Nicked off?’ I say. ‘Abandoned us?’

  ‘Well, yeah.’

  I feel my chest tighten. ‘Lukas wouldn’t do that. He’s not a coward.’

  Teddy stares at me, a strange expression on his face. He’s trying to read me – trying to see what lies under the bluster. ‘You really reckon he’ll be there?’

  I hesitate. Teddy’s words have stirred something deep inside me – something I’ve been trying to deny. I think of Lukas stealing food from our packs. Keeping secrets. Sneaking off during the night, leaving me alone in that log. And for a terrible moment, I don’t trust myself to speak.

  Then I think of his letter. His star charm. Of Lukas himself. And I suddenly feel so exhausted, so sick with myself. So sick with the world. All I want is to close my eyes and make it all go away.

  I look up at Teddy. My voice is barely a whisper. ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right.’ Teddy takes a deep breath. ‘All right, Danika. I reckon you know him better than the rest of us.’

  He looks ready to say something else, but then he catches my expression. He stops himself, frowns a little and places a hand on my forearm. ‘Get some sleep, all right? I reckon you need it. I’ll take first watch.’

  I open my mouth to deny it, to protest that I’m still strong and awake. But that would be a lie. The words stick in my throat, so I toss back the remaining handful of nuts. Syrup coats my tongue, the backs of my teeth. All I want to do is curl up and close my eyes.

  ‘Teddy, I . . .’ I take a deep breath, and fight to summon the remains of my pride. ‘I’ll take the next watch, all right?’

  At first Teddy looks ready to argue, but then he shrugs. ‘Deal.’ He nods towards the corner of the cave. ‘Go on, then. I’ll wake you up at midnight.’

  And that’s the thing about Teddy Nort. Sometimes, when you least expect it, he’s actually quite good at reading people.

  At midnight, Teddy wakes me. I’m surprised to realise I’ve been in a deep sleep; he gives me an apologetic grimace when my eyes blink open.

  ‘Sorry,’ he whispers. ‘Would’ve left you asleep, but I figured you might whack me in the morning if I breached our deal.’

  I smile my thanks, although inwardly I’m kicking myself for volunteering to do this. Now that I’ve managed to fall sleep, I want nothing more than to stay that way for the rest of the night. My dreams were oddly peaceful. I’d expected nightmares – screams, blood, a metal boat crumpling around us – but instead, I dreamed of moonlight. That’s it. Just a plain night sky, with the moon shining down. In fact, the only disturbing thing about tonight’s dream was its lack of stars: just endless black stretching out to embrace the moon. But considering the more graphic things my sleeping mind could have conjured up, I’m willing to count this one as a win.

  Soon enough I’ve swapped my dreaming moon for a waking one. I position myself at the mouth of the cave. Teddy begins to snore a few minutes later, so I know I’m the only one left awake.

  The hillside is dark, but I can just make out the slosh of the river at its base. I watch the water for a while. As my eyes adjust, the scene grows clearer. It’s oddly relaxing: a swish, a sway.

  A shadow . . .

  I jolt upright. Even in the dark, there’s no mistaking it. A human silhouette just passed beneath the moonlight, blotting out a portion of the water. I glance back at my crewmates. Should I wake them? But if the figure disappears again, there’s no point robbing them of sleep. I glance back down towards the river.

  And the boy stares right back at me.

  He can see me. Oh Taladia, he can see through my illusion. He must have watched me return to the cave earlier, after I dumped the porridge. It’s the only way he could know exactly where we’re hiding, and be able to see through the shimmer.

  It’s too dark for me to see his face, but I can tell from his size and his posture that he’s young. Every cell within me burns with certainty that I’ve seen this boy before. I know him. And he knows me. He holds himself like a teenage boy just recently grown into his muscles. He holds himself like . . .

  Lukas.

  And then I’m up and running, scooting down the hillside into the dark. I know it doesn’t make sense, that there’s no reason for Lukas to be here. That he doesn’t have a Water proclivity, that it can’t be him following us. But my heart and my head refuse to cooperate on this one, and all I can think is he’s alive, he’s alive, he’s here.

  I plunge into the water. The cold on my ankles shocks a little sense into me and I stop, pulling myself up short. I stare at him. He stares back. The moonlight hits his face and the mangled scar tissue that used to be his cheek.

  And suddenly, I can’t breathe.

  Because this boy isn’t Lukas.

  It’s Radnor.

  My eyes can’t seem to focus – at least, not on the boy in front of me. Not on his scarred face, or the awkward angle that his arm dangles at beneath his cloak. Not on the bris
tles that sprout like cat fur across his chin. Not on the chocolate brown of his eyes.

  I suppose I see all that on some level, but it doesn’t fully register. My brain fills with another image – a memory – so fast and flooding that it tastes like water. I hold this boy in my arms. A river rises around us. Blood churns in the water. I let him go. He falls . . .

  ‘Danika Glynn,’ he says. ‘Long time no see.’

  There aren’t many times in my life when I’ve felt like fainting. But this, I have to admit, is one of them. I stare at Radnor. I can’t decide if my chest is cold or hot: the shock runs like alchemy juice through my veins. This can’t be real. It can’t be.

  Radnor stands in knee-deep water. There are no ripples around his shins. Instead, his shins are part of the stream – a melting mirage of liquid. The realisation takes my breath away. Radnor’s proclivity is Water. That’s the only way he could have survived. I can picture it now: his body tumbling over that waterfall, blending into the rush. Flowing, not falling.

  I take a shaky breath. ‘We thought . . .’

  ‘I know what you thought,’ Radnor says. ‘You didn’t come to save me.’

  Until now, I’ve been taking hesitant steps towards him. But something in his tone brings me up short. He doesn’t sound like our old crew leader. He sounds cold and harsh: a boy who has hardened his heart to survive. Something in his eyes looks more beast than boy. I used to see that look in the eyes of the foxaries, if I approached them without Teddy nearby. I waver, then take a step back.

  ‘What’s the matter, Glynn? Think I’ll kill you?’ Radnor steps forward. Water rises up around his legs: two tendrils of spiralling liquid. It’s not quite a threat – not yet – but the hint of one. ‘Like you killed me?’

  My mouth is as dry as burnt toast. ‘You’re not dead.’

  ‘You left me to die, though,’ Radnor says, his voice like venom. ‘My crew. The crew I assembled, the crew I put together so carefully. My perfect little jigsaw puzzle. We were going to escape together, start a new life together. And you left me to die.’

  ‘We thought you were dead, Radnor! We didn’t know your proclivity was Water . . . we didn’t know you –’

  Radnor barks a low laugh. ‘Oh, I see. You were so sure I was dead, you didn’t even bother to check. Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?’

  I shake my head. I want to answer him – to apolo­gise, to reassure him, to tell him he’s safe now. But my tongue can’t seem to form the words.

  ‘I went over that waterfall, bleeding. I melted into my proclivity just before I blacked out. By the time I woke up, I’d almost lost myself.’

  ‘Radnor, I –’

  He cuts me off. ‘I forced myself back into human shape somewhere on the edge of a swamp. I rolled onto the shore, bleeding all over the place. And I waited for my friends to find me.’

  I don’t speak.

  ‘They didn’t.’

  More silence. I can’t bring myself to look at him. All the guilt I’ve felt, the shame at his death, is nothing compared with this. The moment I let him fall – that was a single moment of weakness. But this? This is something else entirely.

  ‘Finally, someone came,’ Radnor says. ‘I was barely conscious. She had beautiful hair. I noticed that, even though my eyelids couldn’t stay open. Dark and sleek around her face.’ He steps towards me. ‘Know who it was?’

  I don’t want to say it, but the name slips between my lips. ‘Sharr Morrigan.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Radnor says. ‘Sharr Morrigan. She healed my wound with an alchemy charm. Saved my life.’ His expression grows even harder. ‘You think she saved me out of the goodness of her heart? You think she treated me kindly afterwards? That she took me in like some poor little waif and fed me hot cocoa and biscuits?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and it’s true. It’s so true that it seems to ache inside me. ‘Radnor, I’m so, so sorry.’

  ‘Save it,’ he says. ‘I don’t need your pity, and I don’t have to accept your apologies. Sharr, she . . .’

  For the first time, Radnor loses a little of his composure. He gives a compulsive jerk, then wraps his good arm defensively across his torso. ‘She hurt me. She made me give up our crew’s route. And you know what I did, Danika? I lied to her. Even after you left me for dead. I lied to Sharr and I saved you all.’

  A breeze brushes the stream, rippling reflected moonlight across its surface. My throat doesn’t taste like toast any more. I feel sick.

  Radnor takes another step towards me. ‘The hunters stopped by a stream to refill their waterskins. I broke away from them. I threw myself into that stream and I faded away. Almost lost myself again. By the time I was back in human form, the stream had turned into a river.’

  Another step.

  ‘It carried me to the mountains,’ Radnor says. ‘Days and days, in and out of consciousness. I just let the water carry me. Rivers, streams, creeks . . . they all ended up here, eventually. They carried me to the borderlands. Me and every other chunk of debris in Taladia’s waterways.’

  I stare at him. ‘You’ve been here all along. You’re the one who begged the smugglers to fight the king.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Radnor says. ‘I did. And you know why, Danika Glynn?’

  We stand barely a metre apart now. Suddenly, I’m not sure I want to know the answer to his question. The hardness in his eyes is beyond cold. I half-­expect him to lunge at me.

  ‘Just come back to our crew,’ I say. ‘We’re almost at the Valley. We’ve made it so far, Radnor – we can still finish this journey together.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to the Valley,’ he says. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Then what . . .?’

  ‘My parents were revolutionaries, you know. That’s why they were killed.’

  I nod. ‘Teddy told us.’

  ‘It was the royals who killed them,’ Radnor says. ‘It was King Morrigan who killed my family. Who set his guards on us. Who set Sharr on me.’ He gestures at his scarred face, his mangled arm. ‘Who did this to me. And you teamed up with one of them, Glynn. You replaced me with one of them!’

  I wet my lips. ‘I don’t know what you –’

  ‘Don’t play dumb with me,’ Radnor snaps. ‘You think Sharr didn’t question me about him? About your precious new crewmate, Lukas Morrigan?’ He spits into the water. ‘If he was still with you, I’d have drowned your whole crew days ago.’

  My chest tightens. ‘Radnor, it’s not like that. Lukas isn’t like the other –’

  ‘Save it, Glynn. I don’t want to hear it.’ Radnor takes a deep breath. ‘The royals killed my parents. They tortured me. They stole my crew, my life, my future.’

  His hand slips down to his belt. For the first time, I notice the pistol holstered at his hip. His fingers tap on its handle, quiet and cold, in a simple rhythm. Tap tap tap.

  ‘And that’s why I’m not running off to the Valley,’ Radnor says. ‘Not any more. You can help me get revenge, or you can stand by and let the king win. But either way, I don’t plan to stop until every last Morrigan is rotting in the ground.’

  Tap.

  ‘Now,’ Radnor says, ‘if I were you, I’d haul the rest of your crew out here. I’ve got a deal to make. And if you don’t take it, you’ll be dead before you’re even through the Valley.’

  The others react to the news in different ways. There’s no way to break it to them gently. What am I supposed to say? ‘Surprise, our old crew leader’s alive after all!’ I settle for waking them quietly and leading them out of the cave. Teddy grumbles a bit at being woken, but obeys when I raise a cautious finger to my lips.

  ‘Don’t panic or anything,’ I tell him, ‘but I know who’s been following us.’

  When my crewmates see Radnor, they freeze. The moonlight casts a greyish hue across his face. Maisy’s eyes widen, but she remains quiet. Clem
entine lets out a little gasp and clutches my arm. ‘Is that . . .?’

  I nod.

  It’s Teddy who has the strongest reaction. He actually staggers backwards. There’s no joke on his lips now, none of his usual swagger. He raises a hand to his mouth.

  ‘Hey, Nort,’ Radnor says.

  Teddy just stares. I suddenly remember his history with Radnor. They’ve known each other since childhood. Teddy saved Radnor’s life when the guards came to kill his family. And now, for perhaps the first time in his life, the infamous Teddy Nort is lost for words.

  Clementine steps forward. She holds out an arm, as though to draw Radnor into a hug, but he jerks away. ‘Don’t touch me, richie!’

  ‘I wasn’t going to –’

  ‘I’ve got no reason to trust you,’ Radnor says. ‘I’ve got no reason to trust any of you. But I need your help on this one. I can’t pull off this plan alone.’ He eyes us coldly. ‘And since the smuggling scum refused to join my scheme, I guess I’ll have to make do with you lot.’

  ‘You’re alive,’ Teddy manages. ‘Radnor, you’re –’

  Radnor cuts him off. ‘Water proclivity. Melted into the waterfall. Sharr saved me, tortured me, I escaped, I travelled along rivers and wound up here. Any questions?’

  Everyone just stares.

  ‘Good,’ Radnor says. ‘I’ll take that as a “no”. Now, in case you didn’t realise while you were prancing around Taladia with my royal replacement, the king’s been gathering an army on the edge of the Valley.’

  He waits for a reaction. When it becomes clear that the others are still too stunned to speak, I nod. ‘We know. His soldiers are extending the catacombs to reach the other side.’

  ‘Then you know he’s going to invade? You know you’re running straight into a war zone?’

  ‘Not if we stop him,’ I say.

  Radnor lets out a nasty laugh. ‘Oh, right. I see. And what’s your plan for doing that?’

  ‘Destroy the catacombs,’ Maisy says.