Borderlands

by Skye Melki-Wegner

  Another corner, another chamber. On the far side, two identical tunnels spiral off into the darkness – and neither seems to slope upwards. In fact, they both look flat.

  ‘What . . .?’ Lukas manages.

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t remem­ber . . .’

  ‘Which way?’ Lukas glances wildly from side to side. ‘Left? Right?’

  The water is at our toes now, spilling up into the chamber. If this level is flat, we don’t have time to waste – we need to pick a tunnel, run up it, and make it to another upwards slope before the water hits the ceiling. But my brain is a muddle, and Lukas’s words seem to echo oddly in my panic: left, right, left, right . . . fleeing from the prisoner’s pit . . .

  And then the echo merges with a memory. Another voice. Quirin’s voice. ‘With mine hand on the left . . .’

  ‘What?’ Lukas says.

  ‘With mine hand on the left,’ I say again, struck by a surge of hope. ‘I shall not spill my breath . . . Lukas, it’s the third verse of the smugglers’ song! It’s about a famous prisoner who escaped from the Pit.’

  We glance at each other. Water laps around my ankles, cold and crawling. There’s no time to doubt it, no time to worry about whether I’ve lost my mind. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about smugglers’ songs, it’s that every line has its meaning.

  ‘On the way down, we kept turning right.’ As I speak, I remember the touch of stone upon my palm. ‘I kept my right hand on the wall, traced it around the bends . . .’

  Lukas grabs my arm. ‘Left it is, then.’

  We run. It’s more of a splash than a run, since the water’s crawling slowly up our calves. Across the chamber and down the left tunnel, splashing like children in a gutter after rain. But this is no game. The star charm swings. The shadows dance. The water rises.

  We reach a bend.

  And there, hair bedraggled and eyes wild with madness, Sharr Morrigan waits in the dark.

  Sharr’s lips pull back into a snarl. She holds a candle in one shaking hand. The other hand is a shredded mess by her side. Her shoulder bleeds. A bloody gash streaks across her face. Despite her injuries, the threat is clear. One burst of strength from her Flame proclivity, and that candle’s fire will blast through my skull.

  ‘You did this.’ Her voice is almost a hiss. ‘You ruined everything.’

  Her eyes flick across to Lukas. ‘Do you remember when we were children? How my parents made me watch you, made me look after you? The perfect little prince. The heir to the throne.’ Sharr releases a hiss through her teeth. ‘Do you remember how I loathed you?’

  Lukas swallows. ‘We don’t have time for –’

  ‘There’s always time!’ Sharr’s eyes bulge. ‘We’ve got all the time in the world! We’re going to die down here anyway, and I’m taking you with me, you spoiled little –’

  ‘Let us go!’ I surge forward, suddenly furious. After all we’ve gone through, all we’ve survived, I’m not about to let some revenge-crazed lunatic hold me down here while the water rises. But when I take a step, my star charm flickers out.

  Sharr raises the candle. ‘Stay back! I’ll blow your head off, Glynn, and don’t you doubt it.’

  ‘Why don’t you, then?’

  Lukas grabs my arm, hauling me back. ‘Danika, no! She’s my cousin. I’ll deal with –’

  ‘Deal with me?’ Sharr’s lips twist. ‘Oh no, little Lukas, you’re not dealing with anybody. I plan to burn the flesh off your bones, one limb at a time.’ She steps forward. ‘Then I’ll cast you screaming into that water. And at first you’ll feel grateful, when the water puts out the flames in your flesh. But then it will close over your lips, and fill your lungs, and –’

  ‘Shut up!’ I wrench myself free from Lukas, and take another step forward. ‘Sharr, you’re throwing your life away. There’s still time to get out of here.’

  She gives me a long, slow look. ‘Throwing my life away? No, Glynn, you already did that for me. The moment you blew up that airbase on my watch – that was the end.’

  There is silence.

  The water is halfway up my thighs. I get a sudden flashback to that night in the Rourton sewers: dark tunnels, liquid painting my legs.

  Sharr raises the candle. ‘But if I’m going to bow out,’ she whispers, ‘I’ll do it with a bang.’

  Lukas throws himself in front of me and shoves me backwards. I slip and collapse into the water, before another body crashes on top of me. Something hot and huge bursts over my head. I hear screams above me, the sizzle and flare of fire . . .

  But just before it reaches us, the fireball halts. It rears back, dissolving into a wash of shining dust. Our only light is the candle in Sharr’s hand. I thrust my head above the surface, gasping. As Lukas grabs my shoulder and helps me to my feet, I glance up at the ceiling. The rock above us glimmers, like a blade of shining black. It must be a seam of magnetic stone, like the one that repelled my illusion. No wonder my star charm flickered out, and Sharr’s fireball behaved so oddly. The silent shine of magnetism . . . Is that the last thing I will sense before the water covers me?

  Sharr is staring at us, eyes alight with fury, as she raises her mangled hand to cast another fireball. She hasn’t realised what the problem is yet – but as soon as she spots the magnetic seam, she’ll switch from magic to another weapon . . .

  Before I know what’s happening, Lukas is gone from my side. He collides with Sharr and there’s a terrible crash as they hit the stone wall. Sharr claws at him, trying to rake his face with the long fingernails of her mangled hand, beyond caring about the pain. Her other hand thrusts the candle aloft, keeping it safe from the sloshing water.

  I charge forward, desperate to help, but there’s no way to enter the fight – not without putting Lukas in more danger. The tunnel is too cramped, and the water is still rising. It’s at my waist now, swirling in a froth of cold and foam. I reach for Sharr’s upraised hand and seize the candle, and suddenly we’re tumbling backwards, grappling our way back down the tunnel. The candle burns hot wax against my palm, the water churns and shouts echo like slaps across the tunnel walls.

  And suddenly, Sharr is holding a pistol. She’s wrestled her good arm free from Lukas and she points it towards us, heaving wildly. She aims it right at Lukas’s head.

  And she fires.

  For a long moment, I can’t breathe. It’s as though the water has already covered me. I wait for the blood to spread across Lukas’s face. In the flicker of the candlelight, I wait for him to fall.

  He doesn’t. Sharr does.

  The bullet hit just below her eye. She doesn’t crumple slowly, or let out a final cry of anger. She simply falls. Dead. Just like that. And with a quiet gurgle, the water closes over her.

  ‘What . . .?’ I whisper.

  Lukas looks as stunned as I am. Then he glances up at the roof of the tunnel – that shining arch of black. ‘Magnetic seam,’ he breathes. ‘And that was an alchemy pistol . . .’

  The realisation hits me, and my hand squeezes tighter around the candle. Hot wax drips across my palm, but I barely notice its sting. Magnets and magic don’t mix. That’s why my illusion failed earlier tonight, ricocheting uselessly into the dark. That’s why my star charm flickered out. And when Sharr tried to fire a pistol, her bullet bounced back and . . .

  I stare at the water. There’s no sign of Sharr’s body, but the foam above where she fell churns a sickly crimson. A moment later, the colour is gone: washed into the rising liquid around us.

  With a horrible lurch, I realise the water is lapping at my chest. Sharr has cost us precious time, and I don’t know how far this flat tunnel will last. If it doesn’t slope upwards soon . . .

  ‘Come on!’ I grab Lukas’s arm with my spare hand. ‘We’ve got to keep going.’

  At first, Lukas doesn’t respond. He stares at the place where his cousin
’s body vanished. ‘Yeah.’ His voice is hoarse. ‘All right.’

  We push through the water, legs aching. It’s so much harder than walking through air – my limbs, my clothes, my shoes all clog with water and pull me back, straining like kites against the wind.

  As soon as we pass beyond the magnetic seam, my star charm flares back into life and I toss Sharr’s candle aside. It sinks with a sizzling hiss. I use both hands to push the water aside in front of me, half-paddling as I walk. The star charm dips in and out of the water, light to shadow with every stride. When we reach another chamber, I recognise the glint of black on its far wall. My breath catches with a jolt. This is it – the chamber where I tried to cast my illusion.

  ‘This way!’

  The tunnel winds skywards, rising steeply beneath the earth. It narrows, clenching like a dark fist around us, and we’re forced to wriggle on our bellies. My throat stings. There is nothing but the stink of wet earth and the gush of the flood. I take the lead, but the water churns behind me and Lukas cries out as it sloshes around his body.

  Valley’s vein, I think, remembering the song. A thin little tunnel, pumping with water instead of blood . . .

  The light goes out.

  I can hear ragged breaths – my own, I think, although I’m not sure whether I’m choking or sobbing. I crawl upwards, faster than ever, but the alchemy does not return. One metre, two metres, three . . .

  This time, it isn’t just a stray seam of stone. We’re too close to the surface: too close to the Valley’s main magnetic field. No alchemy can save us now. All we can rely upon is our own bodies, wild and flailing and terrified in the dark.

  The tunnel opens up again, high enough to stand. The world is black. We feel our way forward, hands on the walls. I have no sense of time, no sense of place. Water licks at my shoulders, then my neck. My chin. I clamber up over a ledge – with a cold rush, I remember this drop into the dark – and we stagger up into a higher tunnel.

  The flood surges, rising faster than ever. If I want to keep my head above water, I have to keep my feet off the floor. There’s less than an arm’s length of airspace between the water and the roof now. If I try to swing my arms in a stroke, my knuckles smash against stone. All I can do is paddle, gasp, and struggle onwards. Higher and higher, twisting towards a sky I will never see . . .

  Finally, I feel a prickle on my skin. Night. I sense it just for a moment: the flare of magic returning to my body. With a wild rush, I realise that we have passed beyond the Valley, back into Taladia.

  Beyond the reach of the magnetic seams.

  I press my fingers to Silver’s charm. At my silent command, the silver ebbs back to life: a burst of underwater star-shine. Lukas’s face looks pale and drained, barely above water.

  We battle upwards, sloshing and cursing in the rising froth. My fingers brush a metal bracket on the wall, and the dead glass bulb of an alchemy lantern. Then another, and another. I don’t know whether the lamps drew power from the engine room – or perhaps the soldiers extinguished them when they fled – but I don’t need their light to know their significance.

  ‘Almost there!’ I manage. ‘Almost . . .’

  Finally, a chamber opens up before us. This has to be it: the first chamber we passed below the surface. The one with dozens of tunnels leading up towards the army camp. And over the gush of the water I hear voices. Shouts. Banging fists. Sobbing.

  Lukas and I surge out into the chamber. It has a higher roof than the tunnel, and its floor slopes upwards. The water level drops to my belly as I scramble, dripping and frantic, up onto the higher floor. The chamber’s lamps have been extinguished, but as I splash forward, my star charm illuminates three figures in the dark. My breath catches. Teddy. Clementine. Maisy.

  And a dozen tunnels sealed with iron doors.

  Clementine gasps. Maisy’s hand flies to her chest and Teddy staggers back as though someone’s whacked him. He dissolves into a shaky laugh. I feel like my legs might collapse beneath me, and I reach out to grab Lukas’s arm. This can’t be real. How could this be . . .?

  My friends splash towards me, arms outstretched. ‘Danika!’

  ‘Where did you . . .? I mean, how . . .?’

  ‘Lukas, oh my –’

  Limbs wrap around me, my ear squashes into Teddy’s shoulder and the whole world is just a jumble of warm bodies. I am so relieved, so grateful, that my friends are here. That my crew is together again. But at the same time I’m ashamed of my reaction, because their presence here could be their undoing. Part of me wants to break down, here and now, and cry my eyes out.

  ‘I can’t believe you left us!’ Clementine says. ‘You had no right . . .’ She falters, torn between anger and a choke of relief. ‘You had no right.’

  ‘We went back for you,’ Teddy breathes, voice shaking. He looks from me to Lukas. ‘Both of you. But it was pitch-black, and we called and called, but we couldn’t find you . . .’

  ‘We thought you must’ve gone up another way,’ Maisy says. ‘All we could do was keep going, and hope we’d find you at the top.’

  ‘Fat lot of good it did us,’ Teddy says. ‘We were just saying we hoped you two’d picked some other way to get out, but . . .’ He runs a desperate hand through his hair. ‘I guess not.’

  I glance at the blocked-off tunnels. The iron across their entrances is thick and heavy. I know without trying that there’s no hope of pushing them – not without operating the lever on the other side. ‘The doors won’t open?’

  Clementine nods. ‘We’ve been trying, but . . .’

  ‘They must know someone sabotaged the engine,’ Teddy says. ‘They’re not gonna let us get away.’

  ‘Let me have a look,’ I say, holding up my wrist. ‘I’ve got this charm that Silver made – it’s hot enough to melt metal. Maybe . . .’

  Teddy shakes his head. ‘Door’s too thick. It’d take hours to melt through.’

  I slosh forward. Even at the highest part of the cavern, the water now laps at my thighs. Wet clothing sticks to my skin, then loosens as a new swish of water rises around it. At this rate, we’ll have our noses pressed to the ceiling in minutes.

  ‘Well?’ Clementine says. She stands beside me, an arm wrapped tight around Maisy’s shoulders. ‘Can you melt it?’

  I bang my fist against the door. It clangs dully, like heavy iron, and I know instantly that there’s no hope of melting through in time. No padlock, no bolt. Just solid metal. The only way to shift this iron is by lever – and it lies on the other side of the door.

  I let out a growl, and slam my palm against the metal. The lever is so close, but we’ve got no hope of reaching it. If only we had someone with a Water proclivity. Someone who could flow through the gaps, around the edges of the door. Even now, water nibbles my waist. It’s so cold. My body gives an involuntary shiver, and I steady myself against the door.

  Okay, so we don’t have a Water proclivity on the crew. Not any more, at least. Not since Radnor . . .

  Don’t think about that, I tell myself, as the sound of his screams echoes back into my skull. I force the memory away. I’ll have to deal with it eventually, but this isn’t the time. I grit my teeth. Focus, Danika. What do we have to work with? Lukas is Bird and Teddy is Beast – both useless. Maisy is Fire, which isn’t much help right now. Clementine doesn’t have her proclivity yet, and mine is Night.

  My throat tightens. Night. It’s still night-time outside, isn’t it? This darkness comes from the tunnels, but technically it’s also the dark of night. Perhaps I can melt into it. I can flow around the edges of the doorway. I can reach the other side.

  I can reach the lever.

  But what if I lose myself? I’ve tried before to travel through Night in an emergency – down in the Nightsong’s bunkroom – but this time there’s no Silver to save me. I’ll just float away, lose a grip on my humanity. The idea is more frightening t
han death. I’d rather drown, I think, than scatter my soul to the dark. But what about my friends? If there’s even the slightest chance that this might work, that I could save them . . .

  I suddenly think of Silver’s words after she saved me: ‘If you don’t want to lose yourself, my friend, you must trust yourself first.’ I lost myself to my proclivity because I was afraid of it. Ashamed of it.

  I take a deep breath. ‘I think I can get to the other side.’

  The others stare at me. ‘How?’

  ‘My proclivity.’

  Teddy frowns. ‘Thought you couldn’t control it yet.’

  ‘I can’t. At least, I don’t know if I can. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?’

  ‘But –’

  The water is at my armpits now, cold and gurgling. ‘If I don’t do this, we’ll die.’

  There. I’ve said it.

  Lukas hesitates, then reaches up to touch my cheek. ‘Danika . . .’

  I lean into his touch. And suddenly I don’t even care that the others are watching, or what they might think. I grab the back of Lukas’s head and pull his face towards mine. His breath is warm and his tongue is soft and there is nothing but the brush of lips and stubble against me. We share a silent breath.

  The night is not evil. I am not afraid.

  Blackness floods around me: the touch of water, the touch of night. There is nothing to be ashamed of. I close my eyes. I think of coal-coloured air. Of starlit skies. And I dissolve into the dark.

  Straight away, I know this time is different. There’s no pull in my belly – no urge to throw myself away, or hide from the reality of what I am. I can still feel the shape of my human body: head, limbs, fingers. But all my parts are made of darkness, and it ebbs and flows with the rest of the night around me. I am part of it, but I am separate.

  I’m not afraid, my mind whispers. I’m still me.

  I’m vaguely aware of my friends nearby. They’re crying out, startled by my sudden disappearance. I press past them to reach the door. When Teddy’s elbow gets in the way, I’m startled to find that my body shifts to melt around it. Like running water . . . or shifting shadow. Like a ghost in my father’s bedtime stories.