“’Cause it’s wicked fun?” Una offered.
“Well, okay. So there are two reasons,” Rowan admitted.
“Hey, Lily. Just imagine you’re buck naked and shakin’ it on a cloudy night,” Breakfast said cheerfully.
“I’ll try, Breakfast,” Lily said, her voice only wavering a little. “Are we there yet?”
“Almost,” Una answered. “I can see the bottom.”
“What’s down there?” Tristan asked.
“A concrete thingamajig,” Una said uncertainly. “It could be a platform.”
Lily could feel it getting warmer as they descended. The smell of earth was replaced by the smell of steam and grease, peppered with bursts of ozone and recycled air. Not too far off, Lily could hear the unmistakable double-tap thud of a train moving down the tracks and the muffled squeal of metal on metal. She felt Rowan finally let go of some of the tension he’d been carrying for days. He was still on guard, but no longer on edge like a hunted animal. As Rowan relaxed, so did Lily.
“Una and Breakfast—go down and scout around. Don’t go far, though,” Rowan warned. “And try to avoid being seen. Your clothes are mostly cotton, which is a very expensive material here.”
“No way,” Una said disbelievingly.
“Cotton needs a lot of land to grow. And with the Woven, land is a precious thing. So keep your heads down, okay? There are some desperate people down in the train tunnels, and I don’t want you to get robbed.”
Lily calmed herself enough to peel her face away from Rowan’s chest and watched as Una and Breakfast reached the bottom and went off in separate directions. It was only a few minutes before she heard Una’s voice in her head, although barely. The concrete walls of the subway didn’t block her connection to her claimed as profoundly as granite did, but the soil here contained enough quartz to interfere.
It looks like a deserted platform. It’s safe to come down.
“Una says it’s safe,” Lily repeated.
Rowan, Lily, and Tristan descended the rest of the way and came to what appeared to be a service tunnel. They climbed through a knocked-out hole in the wall and found themselves next to Breakfast and Una on what looked like a deserted subway stop. The walls were tiled with an intricate pattern in a style akin to art deco. The name of the stop, rendered in black-and-white inlay, was RANCH FOUR.
“I saw something like this once,” Una said. “There was a show about the New York City subway system, and they had pictures of stops on the line that never opened or that had closed years ago. It was so cool. It was like looking back in time.”
“Ranch Four?” Tristan said. “What’s that?”
“They have animal ranches outside the cities in this world. They raise luxury meats for rich people on them,” Lily said distastefully.
“Before this ranch was even built it was overrun by Woven. That was decades ago, though,” Rowan said in a faraway voice. He looked at Lily, his brow furrowed. “How did you know about the ranches?”
Lily thought fast. “Tristan told me about them. The other Tristan,” she answered, looking away. It wasn’t totally a lie, either. “He said the ranches were work camps for criminals and poor people.”
“The Covens round up homeless citizens a few times a year to give them jobs,” he said, adding heavy sarcasm to the second half of his sentence. “The ranches are one of the places they send them.”
“Sounds like slave labor,” Breakfast said.
“The Covens can’t take away a person’s citizenship and banish them to the Outlands unless they’ve committed a serious crime, and the cities are only so big. Housing is expensive in walled cities that only have so much space. The poor have nowhere to go. A lot of them come to the underground train tunnels to hide from the guards.” Rowan ran his hand across a bit of graffiti that had been painted near the hole they’d climbed through to get from the service tunnel into the station. “This station belongs to a gang.”
“Where are they?” Tristan said. He looked around. There were no sleeping bags or piles of personal items—no sign that anyone lived down here. Tristan’s face suddenly froze. “Woven?” he whispered.
Rowan shook his head, perplexed and looking around like Tristan. “No. Woven don’t come into the train tunnels.”
“Why?” Lily blurted out.
“I don’t know, Lily. They just don’t.”
“Okay, that’s ridiculous,” she said, exasperated. “Hasn’t anyone in this world thought that maybe it was a tad weird that Woven don’t go down in the tunnels? What? Are they superstitious or something?”
Rowan shrugged. “The Woven do what they do, and I don’t know anyone who’s ever stopped to ask them why they do it. We’re usually too busy trying to kill them.”
Lily leaned back, struck by a thought. “That’s the problem,” she said musingly. She waved a hand in the air dismissively. “Forget it,” she said, and changed the subject before Rowan could pick up on what she was thinking and get agitated. “So where’d the gang go?”
“Well, it looks like they move through here a lot,” Breakfast said, looking down. “Look—there’s no dust on the ground, but there is on that bench over there.”
“You’re right, Breakfast. Good eye,” Rowan said. “The trail leads down the tracks.”
“Do we stay or try to find them?” Una asked. “I could really use some food.”
Rowan bit his lower lip and frowned in thought, looking at Tristan. “What do you say?”
Tristan glanced at Lily, worried. His eyes darted down to the three willstones that hung around her neck. “If they see her, will they know who she is?”
“I can hide two of my stones and use a glamour,” Lily said, already removing her largest and smallest willstones and tucking them into her bra.
“Something less pretty than your normal face,” Rowan suggested. “You want to blend in.”
“Got it.” Lily altered her face until it bordered on plain. “You should change your face, too,” she told Rowan.
“Why?” Una asked. “Would he be recognized, too?”
Lily grinned. “Rowan is known as Lord Fall here,” she said. “He’s totally famous.”
“Really?” Una quipped impishly, looking Rowan over.
“I was Lord Fall, now I’m just an Outlander. But I should still use a glamour,” Rowan said, changing the way the dim light hit his face until Lily barely recognized him. “Our clothes are still a problem, though.”
“We stole them, and we’re looking to trade with them. You said they were valuable,” Breakfast said, brewing up a plan. “Come on, guys. We’re badass thieves, on the run from the city guard. Act the part.”
“I don’t know,” Rowan said, looking Lily over. She snatched a thought from the front of his mind. Nothing in the world could make someone as refined and fragile looking as Lily appear like a badass. Even with her glamour-altered face, there was still something inherently graceful about the way she moved that she could never wholly hide.
Lily could feel her mechanics’ empty bellies rumbling, and their hunger upset her in a way her own hunger wouldn’t. Her coven was her responsibility and she felt an inexplicable need to provide for them. “If we want to catch a train south, we’re going to have to go to a station that’s still in use,” she said, trying to win Rowan over with sugar rather than spice. “We’re bound to run into other people when we do that anyway.”
I’ll be fine, Rowan, she added reassuringly in mindspeak.
He finally relented, and they set off down the tracks. They still had some of Lily’s strength in them, and Rowan wanted to encounter whatever awaited them before it completely wore off.
They followed the tracks until they could see more signs of habitation and came to an abrupt halt when they spotted the first tunnel denizen, standing next to a barrel fire. The scruffy kid, who was twelve or thirteen tops, saw them and froze like a deer in headlights. Before anyone in Lily’s group could call out to him, the kid took off down the tracks.
“A lookout,” Rowan said, dismayed.
“Don’t worry, Ro. We’re just here to trade,” Breakfast reminded him calmly. He rubbed his hands together in delighted anticipation as they followed the lookout at a cautious pace. He was enjoying this.
They went around a bend in the track and saw the lookout talking to a tight huddle of grubby-looking preteens. Breakfast took the lead.
“Okay, you three just hang back, stick close to Lily, and look scary.” Breakfast glanced back at Rowan, Tristan, and Una. “Like you normally do. Let me handle this.”
“Maybe I should be the one—” Rowan began.
“No, let Breakfast go talk to them,” Una interrupted, her eyes narrowed into a slyer-than-usual position.
Rowan looked to Tristan. “He’s got this,” Tristan said confidently. “There’s a reason we always send Breakfast to buy the weed before a party.” Rowan looked confused and Tristan smiled reassuringly. “Breakfast is clutch at dealing with people like this. He hardly ever gets his ass kicked.”
The “hardly ever” part of Tristan’s sentence made Rowan even more nervous than before, but it was too late. Breakfast was already talking with the cluster of tunnel teens. They saw him gesture casually back to the group, and Lily took note of how the tunnel kids zeroed in on her and Rowan. Their posture stiffened as they regarded Rowan’s gigantic willstone, which was still roiling with Lily’s energy.
Breakfast worked on them with his innocuous goofiness and mildly irritating charm, and persuaded the kids to bring Lily’s group to trade with the elders. They got plenty of stares as they made their way through the tent city that had sprung up in the abandoned branches of the subway tunnels.
The people down here weren’t Outlanders—they were more European looking. Lily had been expecting a blend of races, but as she considered it, it made sense. These were the castoffs of the cities who didn’t have the skills to survive outside the walls. They wouldn’t be accepted into an Outlander tribe, and without a tribe, a person outside the walls was as good as dead. That’s why they hid in the tunnels. They had no other place to go, except into indentured servitude at one of the ranches. Most of the faces that looked fearfully at Rowan’s giant smoke stone were young kids—dirty, pale little things who looked desperately malnourished.
So many women and children, Rowan. There are no grown men here.
The men usually have to turn themselves in. They go to work on the ranches, and the city guard turns a blind eye to the fact that their families are hiding down here. The ranches get the strongest and cheapest labor, and the cities only have to deal with the nonviolent women and children.
Lily looked around her. They’d been brought down the tracks to another abandoned station—but this one was full of people. She wondered briefly why this station was occupied when the other one wasn’t, but kept her questions to herself.
It’s like they’re hostages. Why doesn’t the city do something about this?
Because they all make money off it, Lily. Ranching is extremely lucrative. Ranchers donate money to the Council’s election campaigns, and the city conveniently ignores the people who live down here.
What about the Covens? Didn’t Lillian try to do something about this?
She could feel Rowan cringe inwardly. Just the mention of Lillian’s name made something inside him recoil.
Yes, she did. The Covens used to have limited power. Remember, the Covens aren’t elected—witches are born with their power, like aristocracy, but the Council is elected. They used to be the only branch of government that could write laws, but Lillian said that the Council was corrupted by the need to raise election funds, and she campaigned to make it possible for witches to write laws, too. At first she used that power to help the tunnel people and the Outlanders. But later, when she changed, she used it to draft legislation that allowed her to hang scientists.
Lily didn’t ask any more questions. Somehow, the answers she got from Rowan always seemed to lead back to Lillian and her hangings. Her curiosity flared again. How could anyone go so quickly from being a hero of the people to a tyrant?
Lily heard Breakfast’s voice take on a particularly jovial tone and picked up her head. He had begun conversing with three middle-aged women, and from the way the rest of the tunnel denizens seemed to defer to them, Lily supposed they were the leaders of this underground gang. The exchange had started out amicably enough, but their voices began to rise. A pale, blond woman with a stout body and thick, meaty hands stepped away from the group and marched toward Lily and Rowan.
“These two,” the woman said angrily, glancing back at Breakfast. “You can’t tell me they’re not Coven. No one with a willstone that active would have been left untrained. And her? The little witch? She even smells like magic. The whole lot of you are her claimed or I’ve never seen a coven in my life.”
“I don’t belong to any of the Thirteen Covens, but I am a witch,” Lily snarled back at her. She felt Rowan put a hand on her upper arm, but she shook it off. Lily didn’t like this woman, and being underground where she felt cut off and endangered, she didn’t feel like playing nice. Something told her being nice wouldn’t help anyway—not with this woman. “Now, who are you?”
“Queen of the Fairies,” the woman said sarcastically. “What do you want?”
“To trade and to get the hell out of here,” Lily replied.
The woman actually smiled. “That’s all I wanted to hear, witch.” She looked Rowan up and down, her eyes rounding with worry when they regarded his willstone. Her own willstone was small and vaguely pinkish in hue, although Lily had noticed that people with little or no magic tended to have nearly colorless willstones that resembled white quartz or dull opals.
The woman spun on her heel and stormed away, shouting orders as she went. “Outfit them fairly, and show them where to jump a train out of town. Then make damn sure they get on it.”
“Hey!” Lily shouted after her. The woman stopped and turned, her lips pinched thin, showing she was at the end of her patience. “We’ll get out and stay out on one condition,” Lily said.
“I’m listening,” the woman replied.
“If you tell anyone we were here, I’ll come back for you.”
“Never laid eyes on you in my life,” the woman said, and then disappeared down the curving tracks.
Lily’s coven was taken to what appeared to be one of the larger barrel fires. Some of the older teen lookouts brought food, and then they laid out an array of trade goods. Rowan sorted through the wearhyde clothes, blades, and bundles of wovensbane—an herb that smelled like citronella when burned that sometimes managed to repel the Woven.
“Some of these jackets look warm enough,” Tristan said, trying to make the best of it. “And I’ve noticed that even though everyone here wears leather pants and jackets, they still wear some sort of cotton or linen tops. We can use our own shirts at least.”
“It’s not leather, it’s wearhyde,” Lily corrected. “It’s grown from a culture, not skinned from an animal, and I think it’s even nicer than leather.”
“You would, Your Vegan-ness,” Una said, smiling.
“These are probably the best-quality supplies they have,” Rowan whispered to Breakfast. “I wouldn’t haggle too much.”
“I wasn’t going to haggle at all,” Breakfast said. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “In fact, I think they need our help more than they need to trade.” Breakfast waved one of the older teens closer. The grubby kid balked for a moment. He didn’t want to come anywhere near Rowan.
“It’s alright, Riley,” Una said, rolling her eyes. “He’s not going to bite you. Tell him what you told us.”
“Are you really a witch?” Riley asked Lily cautiously.
“She is,” Rowan answered for her. Lily could tell his answering for her was a reflex. No one was allowed to speak directly to a witch unless she addressed them first, and now that Lily and Rowan were back in his world, some of his old habits with Lillian were seeping back into his b
ehavior.
“Tell them about the babies being born strange,” said a high, piping voice from the shadows. A little boy, no older than five, stepped forward.
“Quiet, Pip.” Riley reached out and put his hand on the little boy’s head and then turned back to Rowan. “It’s not just the babies. A lot of women have fallen sick and the witches in the city say they can’t help them.”
“They’re lying to you,” Rowan snapped angrily. “There isn’t much a witch can’t cure. What are the symptoms and how did the sickness start?”
Riley and Pip shared a look, and then Riley finally decided to continue. “It started about two years back. A professor from Salem asked some of the tunnel women to smuggle metal containers filled with what looked like ordinary dust out of each of the cities. But when the women came back they had burns on their hands and faces, like sunburns only much worse. Then they started getting sick. A lot of them died, and those that didn’t had babies that—” Riley suddenly broke off and grimaced like his stomach was turning. “Every woman who helped in the smuggling in every city ended up sick, dead, or with a baby that just wasn’t right.”
“Where did the smugglers bring the dust?” Rowan asked.
“Outland.” Riley suddenly looked sheepishly at his feet to avoid Rowan’s eyes. “The Salem professor who organized the whole thing was an Outlander.”
A chill rattled down Lily’s spine. “Did you get a name?”
Riley nodded. “She was important, so I remembered her name. Professor Chenoa. And there were two others. They weren’t real professors, but they were still awfully smart. Hawk and Kiwi? No, that’s not right, but it’s close.”
“Let me see the sick,” Lily ordered hollowly. “And I want to see the babies.”
Lily glanced at Rowan as she followed Riley down a dark passageway that led away from the main group of tunnel people.
Lily. You know Chenoa, don’t you?
I know of her. She and the other two—Hakan and Keme—were the scientists that Lillian wanted. They were the scientists we fought Lillian to protect, Rowan.
Firewalker Page 20
