Borderlands

by Skye Melki-Wegner

  I turn to her, surprised. When she steps into the moonlight, there’s an odd intensity in her eyes – the same fire I noticed when we decided to attack the airbase.

  ‘How?’ Radnor says. ‘What’s your plan?’

  Maisy looks at him. ‘I’m not sure yet. I don’t know enough about the tunnels – I’d need to get closer . . .’

  In response, Radnor unslings a pack from his shoulder. He tips it open and nine or ten heavy bundles of fabric tumble out. Uniform cloaks.

  I feel my eyes widen. ‘Where’d you get those?’

  ‘Stole them.’

  ‘What, from actual soldiers? But how –?’

  ‘They didn’t mind.’ Radnor’s fingers rest upon the pistol at his belt. ‘No need for cloaks when you’re six feet under.’

  Clementine lets out a little choke. ‘You killed them?’

  ‘Of course I did. Crept up on their camp while they were sleeping, and . . .’ He pauses for effect, clearly relishing the horror on our faces.

  ‘But . . .’ Clementine’s voice falters.

  ‘They’re our enemies, richie,’ Radnor says, and there’s something nasty in his eyes. This isn’t the same boy who went over the waterfall. Whatever Sharr did to him . . . he’s changed. ‘In war, you’re allowed to kill your enemies. They’re the ones digging the tunnels, helping the king.’

  ‘Not by choice,’ I say. ‘You know they’re all conscripts. If we’d stuck around in Rourton until we were eighteen, we would’ve been forced into the army too.’

  ‘If you want to fight a war,’ Radnor says, ‘you’ve got to make a few sacrifices. There’s no other way to beat the Morrigans.’ He gives me a pointed look. ‘And if my enemy plays dirty, that makes it fair for me to do the same.’

  ‘If you’re so confident,’ Teddy says slowly, ‘then why do you need us? Looks like you’ve got a plan worked out for yourself.’

  ‘Can’t get into the army camp,’ Radnor says. ‘Not on my own. If they see a lone person sneaking out of the borderlands, they’ll be suspicious. But new platoons turn up every day – groups of soldiers coming in from other parts of Taladia. I’ve watched their guards, I’ve spied on their checkpoints. And if we march in as a platoon of five soldiers, no one will bat an eyelid.’

  ‘But surely we’ll need papers, identification . . .’

  Radnor points at the dead soldiers’ cloaks. ‘Check the pockets if you want. I’ve got them all.’

  My mind whirls. If we do this – if we infiltrate the army camp – we might actually be able to stop the king. There must be all sorts of useful information there, and the soldiers are allowed into the catacombs to work . . .

  ‘We have to leave now,’ Radnor says. ‘I’ve wasted days trying to convert the smugglers. Every hour, those workers get closer to finishing the tunnels and the king gets closer to starting this war.’

  No one speaks. Deep down, I know Radnor is right – this is our best chance to save the Valley. To save the wild hope that we left Rourton to achieve: a new land, a new life. A new home. And this is my best chance to find Lukas.

  But then I look into Radnor’s eyes. I can’t mention Lukas. I can’t let Radnor know the king’s own son might be there at the camp, ripe for the plucking. Because if Radnor gets Lukas in his sights . . .

  Teddy turns to me. ‘Hey, do you think maybe Lu–’

  I cut him off with a frantic shake of the head. There’s an awkward pause. Teddy looks slightly confused, but seems to register that I don’t want to talk about Lukas now. He gives a tiny nod to indicate his understanding. I know there’ll be questions later.

  ‘All right,’ Teddy says. ‘I reckon you’re right, Radnor. No point running off to the Valley if the king’s just gonna invade anyway. We’ve gotta do something.’

  Maisy nods. ‘I’m in.’

  We all turn to look at Clementine. She stares at her sister, a pained look on her face. I know that she wants to say ‘no’, to keep her twin out of danger. But this time, there is no way to stay out of danger. If we want to escape through the Valley, we’ll have to face this army – one way or another.

  ‘Well,’ Clementine says, ‘I suppose I’m in too.’

  A cold smile curls onto Radnor’s face. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘I think this plan will work out just fine.’

  It’s a full day’s march to the army camp. We try to move quickly, but the need for stealth overrides Radnor’s preference for speed. He urges us onwards, moves in furious strides, and even swears at Maisy when she stops to catch her breath.

  ‘She almost died a few days ago.’ Clementine’s voice is shrill. ‘She’s still recovering.’

  Radnor looks ready to snap back at her, but I step in hastily to avoid the argument. ‘We shouldn’t be stomping so fast anyway,’ I say. ‘It makes too much noise. We’ve just run off from a gang of angry smugglers, and Sharr’s still out there somewhere.’

  Teddy nods. ‘Can’t destroy the catacombs if we get our heads blown off before we get there.’

  Radnor looks irritated but doesn’t argue. He takes a deep breath and turns away, digging his fingernails into his palms.

  After a while, Teddy provides an animated retel­ling of our attack on the airbase, clearly hoping that it will improve Radnor’s mood. It doesn’t. Our old crew leader just glances at us, one eyebrow arched in disdain.

  ‘Didn’t stop the king for long, did it?’ he says.

  As the day wears on, I find myself watching him. Radnor moves with an odd rhythm, as if his injured arm has rendered him permanently off balance. Even so, he strides further and further ahead of the group – leaving the rest of us to trail in his wake. When we cross a shallow stream, I splash along awkwardly, trying not to soak my trousers. Radnor, however, slips into the water as though it’s his skin. His lower legs dissolve, fading into froth.

  I reach up to touch my proclivity tattoo. I think of what Silver said during the storm – that I lose myself in Night because I’m scared of it. Ashamed of it. Because I still don’t know how to trust myself. I have to come to terms with the fact that my proclivity is Night. Silver’s proclivity was Night too, wasn’t it? And she wasn’t evil. She gave up everything to stand against her family. Against her own son . . .

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Radnor says.

  I look at him, surprised. It takes me a moment to realise I’ve sped up, spurred by frustration at my failed proclivity. I’m now walking beside Radnor, nine or ten metres ahead of my friends. I glance back at the others, but they all seem to be trooping along fine. As I watch, Teddy disentangles a vine from his ankle and waves it at Clementine like a mock sword.

  ‘He’s a child,’ Radnor says.

  ‘Who, Teddy?’

  Radnor nods. ‘I used to think he was funny. When we were children, back in Rourton. But this isn’t a game any more. This is war. He needs to take things more seriously.’

  I duck beneath a low-hanging branch. ‘Teddy was devastated, you know. When you . . . fell. We all were.’

  There’s a pause.

  ‘Not devastated enough to find me,’ Radnor says.

  There’s no replying to that, so I just look down at my feet. The afternoon is warm. Uncomfortably warm, now we’ve worked up a bit of a sweat. An occasional breeze sneaks through to cool us, but vegetation in this part of the borderlands bristles as thick as a toothbrush.

  After a solid half-hour of tramping through the undergrowth, Radnor speaks. ‘Do you know why I let you on the crew, Danika?’

  I look at him. He stares back. His face is different now: dark stubble, silvery scars, a mangled cheek. At first glance, his eyes look the same as the first time I saw him, a dark chocolate brown. But there is something different in them now. Something colder.

  Radnor steps a little closer.

  ‘Because of my signal flare?’ I guess. I choose a deliberately light tone, trying to kee
p the conversation friendly. But either Radnor doesn’t pick up on my unease, or he doesn’t care. He takes another step forwards.

  ‘I chose you,’ he says, ‘because I thought . . .’ He stares at my face. His gaze is so intense that I squirm. ‘I thought we . . .’

  I stare back at him. My heartbeat falters.

  And suddenly I don’t want to know what he thought – or what he felt. My eyes latch onto his: those dark-brown orbs, fringed by heavy lashes. So different from Lukas’s green. I don’t want to think about what Radnor means. I wrench my gaze down, flustered and uncomfortable.

  He gives a bitter laugh. ‘Guess I thought wrong.’

  And with that, he’s gone. A broken gaze, a few steps, and he retakes the lead into the wilderness.

  ‘What was that about?’ Teddy says as he catches up.

  I shake my head. My cheeks feel hot. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Really?’ Clementine says. ‘Because it didn’t look like –’

  ‘Just a misunderstanding, that’s all.’

  We all stare into the foliage. Radnor is concealed by a curtain of brown and green.

  ‘Why’d you cut me off before, anyway?’ Teddy asks. ‘When I started talking about Lukas.’

  ‘What?’ I say, distracted. ‘Oh.’

  I focus on Teddy’s question, and the true danger of the situation hits me again. Radnor has been through a hell of a lot, and he’s lost a hell of a lot of himself. If he goes looking for revenge, and we’re not around to stop him . . .

  ‘Listen,’ I say quickly, ‘you can’t mention Lukas in front of Radnor, okay?’

  ‘He already knows about him,’ Teddy says.

  ‘Yeah, but he doesn’t know where Lukas has gone,’ I say. ‘You can’t say anything about how we think he’s headed for the army at the Valley. Nothing about how we’re hoping to find him there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I stare into the foliage. I think of Radnor striding forward, with that intensity alight in his eyes. I think of his fingers tapping on the pistol.

  ‘Because Lukas is a Morrigan,’ I say. ‘And if Radnor finds him, I think he’s going to . . .’

  ‘What?’ Clementine says.

  I take a deep breath. ‘He’s going to kill him.’

  We pass our first patrol an hour later. Teddy hears the signs first, and throws out a hand to still the rest of us. I freeze, registering the sudden fear upon his face. ‘What?’

  Teddy gestures to lean in close, then whispers into my ear. ‘The animals around here are restless.’

  ‘Animals? I don’t see any –’

  ‘Mice, possums, that sort of thing.’ Teddy shakes his head. ‘I can feel it when a whole bunch of them start panicking. Another group of humans went through here, I reckon – not long ago.’

  A moment later, Radnor doubles back to join our huddle. ‘Soldiers,’ he confirms, voice low. ‘I’d say they’re heading back to camp. We’ll have to go around.’

  And so we do. We waste half an hour tramping around in a useless arc to avoid the patrol. I gaze up through the trees and try to spot some sign of the mountains to orient myself. All I see is thick, brist­ling foliage.

  The first time this happens, the idea of soldiers is still nerve-racking enough that we make the detour without complaint. But when we spot a second patrol, and then a third, a fourth, a fifth, it’s clear that all our spirits are sinking.

  ‘We’ll never get there,’ Clementine says. She wipes a sweaty strand of blonde from her face, and glares at Radnor. ‘Every time we make some progress we have to loop backwards, or sideways, or –’

  ‘There are two options,’ Radnor says. ‘Either we loop around, or we try to slaughter every member of every patrol we pass before they have a chance to fire back. Which one sounds better to you?’

  Clementine glares. ‘I’m just saying that there seem to be an awful lot of soldiers around this area. Couldn’t we have gone another way?’

  Radnor adopts a patronising smile and claps her on the shoulder. ‘Oh, well done – you noticed there are a lot of soldiers around here. Know why, richie? Because we’re almost at their camp.’

  There is a pause as we all digest this.

  ‘We’re almost there?’ I say.

  ‘Oh good, listening comprehension too,’ Radnor says. ‘I can see why I recruited you to my crew – you’re a bunch of geniuses.’

  I’m tempted to snap at him to stop being such a sarcastic nitwit, but I guess he’s built up a fair bit of frustration today. Instead, I take another look up through the trees. The foliage is a little sparser here. When the breeze passes through, there’s a flurry of movement and the scent of leaves wafts up my nostrils. But the canopy still blocks out the sky, and I can’t see through it well enough to locate the mountains.

  Or more importantly, the Valley between them.

  The shadows are growing long when we reach the torrent. The roar of water is so violent, so primal, that I hear it almost twenty minutes before it comes into view.

  It’s a gushing eruption of water, cascading from a rocky outcrop to spill into a nearby river. My first thought is that it must be an outlet for an underground river – but how could a river surge upwards with such raw power? The mass of water churns wildly, smashing and crashing from the rocky earth into the waterway.

  ‘Where’s it coming from?’ I say, alarmed.

  Radnor gives me an impatient look. ‘We’re in the borderlands, Danika. In case you hadn’t noticed, the magic around here is a little twisted.’

  He has a point. I remember the stream of shining clouds. The bubbling river. The unnatural storm. Surely this is just another oddity of the borderlands: a quirk caused by alchemical pollution.

  ‘Come on,’ Radnor says. ‘We don’t have time for sightseeing.’

  But even as the roar of the torrent fades behind us, I can’t resist one last peek back through the trees.

  As afternoon fades to evening, we stop to change into our uniform cloaks. It’s lucky that we have a few spares, because the first cloak I try on is about fifty metres too long – I can’t take a step without tripping over it. Then I remember how Radnor acquired the uniforms and feel a little sick at myself. This isn’t luck. Every one of these cloaks represents a soldier Radnor killed. As I pull on a smaller cloak, I try not to think about the person who died so that Radnor could steal it. Shot in their sleep. Did it hurt? Did they wake up, panicking, as bullets splattered their camp in the dark?

  The others look strange in their khaki cloaks. To my surprise, Clementine is the one who best resembles a soldier – at least, the soldiers that I’ve seen tramping around Rourton when they tour the north. She scrapes her hair back into a bun and straightens her cloak.

  ‘Identity cards are in the breast pocket,’ Radnor says.

  Well, so much for not thinking about the cloak’s previous owner. I don’t want to look at the card, but I know I have to. Once we reach the edge of the army camp, it won’t look good if I can’t even report my own name to the guards. So I dig the paperwork out of my pocket, steel my stomach, and take a look.

  Carlita Jones. Under her name it says ‘Earth’, so I suppose that must have been her proclivity. There’s no picture on the card, which is a relief. Not just because my face wouldn’t have matched the image, but because I don’t know if I could have handled seeing her face.

  ‘What happens with the guards?’ Although I’m speaking to Radnor, I try to avoid his gaze. Even so, I feel his eyes on me.

  ‘Single file,’ Radnor says. ‘They’ll ask for your name and your card. We’ll have to say we’re new arrivals – just turned eighteen and newly conscripted.’

  ‘Where are we from?’ I say.

  ‘Castenith,’ Radnor says, after a moment’s pause.

  I nod. It’s a good choice. Ideally we’d say Rourton, of course, since we know the city so well
– but given the number of wanted posters bearing our details, it would be too risky. Castenith is a large city up in the north. Its accent and local customs should be similar enough to Rourton’s that we can pull off the ruse.

  I glance around at my crewmates. It’s strange to see them dressed as soldiers. If we hadn’t left Rourton, this would have been our fate. As soon as I turned eighteen, I would have been wearing a uniform like this, and carrying an identity card that said ‘Danika Glynn’ instead of ‘Carlita Jones’. Fighting wars for the king who killed my family. The idea leaves a bitter tang in my mouth.

  But instead, here we are. Five teenagers playing at soldiers. And we’re not here to help King Morrigan’s war plans. We’re here to destroy them.

  In the final flush of evening light, we reach the western shore of a lake. I spot it coming through the trees: a vast body of water, swathed in the bite of a sinking sun. We position ourselves in a thicket and peer around the trunks to get our bearings.

  Radnor points across the lake. ‘Army camp’s on the southern shore.’

  I squint, but I can’t see much from here: just a smattering of distant lights. Camp fires, perhaps. The lake is too huge, the army too distant. Water stretches like a blanket across the land. Around us, rivers roll out from the forest, spilling down to feed into the lake.

  No, not just a lake. A draining bowl.

  And to the east, directly across the water, there is no shoreline. Instead, the water collides with a massive stone wall. A dam. A dam to keep the water from returning to the Valley.

  The feet of mountains rear on either side of the wall, erasing the horizon. From this short distance, their height is staggering. I can see why the Eastern Boundary Range is called impassable. No hope of biplanes flying over them, or soldiers scaling their peaks in one piece.

  ‘Look,’ Clementine whispers. ‘That’s it. Just behind that wall.’

  I follow her gaze and my breath catches in my throat. After all this time – all this running, fighting, terror, surviving – we’re so close. There’s only one passage through these mountains. A truncated ‘V’ of empty air, rising behind the dam wall.